Extraction
by ykvt
Summary: Re-uploaded by request.
1. Don’t Look Back

_Chapter 1: Don't Look Back_

* * *

"Open up on visitation room four!"

Mahone hated being made an example of.

"Wait – wait, I don't understand. I thought visitors were allowed at least half an hour. I didn't come all this way for even less than that."

"Lady, the prisoner provoked a fight outside the mess hall this morning. The warden considers ten minutes a favour. Take it or leave it."

Shifting on the metal chair he was restrained to, Mahone resisted the urge to glance around as the soft voice took a breath.

"Fine. But tell that jackass I want to speak with him after this."

Mahone hid a smile as the clack of high-heeled boots approached from behind him. Without even having laid eyes on her, he was already glad he had held out for so long since learning that she was flying out to visit.

The guard repeated the time limit to them both before shutting the door. Mahone hid his cuffed hands further underneath the table and blinked his unease from his eyes as she came to a halt opposite him.

Gripping the back of the chair opposite, she allowed the silence to play out the emotions neither of them could express. Finally, she seated herself.

"Do you want to die in here, Alex?"

Mahone's face fell as she pressed her doe eyes closed with the palms of her hands. Leaning in so that he could take a closer look at her, he felt the helplessness he had come to fear seep through him again.

"I didn't start the fight," he said, trying to catch her gaze. "Inmates were going to find out sooner or later that there was an FBI agent incarcerated in here for the murder of a fugitive. Rumour got out. Three of them ambushed me."

"And you fought back."

"Well … yeah."

His weak protest flattened into a sigh as she raised her head again and stared at the security camera hanging in a corner of the ceiling.

"Who's watching us through that thing?"

He followed her gaze. "Nobody."

There was a dry laugh, followed by the scrape of metal as his visitor stood. His senses were assaulted by her perfume before he realised with a start that she was in front of him.

He shivered as she placed a hand on his face. It dimly occurred to him that the coldness of her skin was impossible in light of the heat permeating the room.

"Always the skeptic," she said, brushing her lips over his nose. "You really think there's no-one looking over us right now? Just think – if I could get you out of here. Are you telling me you think there'll be nothing waiting for you?"

"I wouldn't deserve it if there was."

"That's your problem. You don't have enough … faith."

He inhaled sharply as she wrapped an arm around the back of his head and pulled him into a crushing kiss. The perfect taste he'd never expected to savour again was interrupted just as suddenly by a salt and copper tang.

Drawing back, he realised that his tears had intermingled with a crimson streak that wasn't his own. His eyes widened in horror as he took in the blood trickling down her beautiful face.

"That's why this happened, Alex," she whispered. "It's all going to be on you."

* * *

The scream that fought its way out of Mahone's throat died halfway as his eyes snapped open, leaving nothing but a panicked croak.

He struggled with his sheets for a few moments, before throwing them off to the side. Touching his lips with a shaking hand, he felt a tremor run through his body.

It was so easy to go back to the fantasy that she was still there.

He thumped his arm back to his side again, letting out a long sigh. Sweat poured from his forehead as the image of her hateful stare seared into the edges of his memory. If there was one overwhelming drawback from giving up midazolam, it was that every single nightmare he'd had since had been harder to let go of.

A rustling noise jerked him further awake.

Turning his head to the side, his eyes flashed, and he scrambled upright. Pressing himself against the wall, he watched as a mechanical pair of hands finished folding the covers he'd discarded. Meeting cool hazel eyes, he adjusted his own gaze, searching for his voice.

"What the hell are you doing?" he rasped.

Michael smirked at him through the semi-darkness.

"I'm sitting on the floor watching my cellmate shout in his sleep for the fifth night in a row." Tilting his head to the side, Michael took on the expression of an artist studying a ruined canvas. "I don't usually recognise the names – but I think I have a pretty good idea who Pam is."

Mahone didn't move except to raise a hand.

"Get out of my face or I swear to God I will hurt you."

"No, you won't," Michael replied, almost cheerful.

Mahone blinked as the younger man stretched his legs out and folded his sleeve-covered arms over his chest. Studying Michael, he kept his body tense in direct contrast to his cellmate's relaxed demeanour.

It was true – he'd barely given the former engineer any thought since arriving at Elderach State Penitentiary. Half of his first week had been spent attempting to get into contact with Jack. The other half had involved him lying unconscious on an infirmary bed.

When Mahone had bothered to pay attention, however, he had sensed Michael's satisfaction at their reversed situations. Michael had been the one in hiding on the outside, constantly looking over his shoulder, reviled and hunted down.

Mahone wasn't particularly enjoying his turn as scapegoat within the confines of a maximum security prison.

"Whatever you want – five words or less," he said with more force, leaving no room for a condescending answer.

"Considering this is the first time you've bothered talking to me since you got here, I'd rather not waste the opportunity. But okay." The smile on Michael's face widened as he raised his eyes to the ceiling. "How about – 'Please stop. Regards, Row B.'"

Mahone glanced out through the bars to his right.

"Come again?"

"'Or we will kill you'," Michael went on, shrugging.

There was a brief thought in Mahone's mind that he had transitioned from a dream to an hallucination. Looking at Michael again and discerning the arrogance on display, however, he shook his head.

"I wasn't giving you an open invitation to be a smartass. Elaborate."

"I'm pretty sure the guys who pulled you aside two days ago would have explained everything. Some advice, Alex? Dislocating the leader's arm and pulling his shank on the rest of them would tend to set them off. Not put them in a talkative mood."

Mahone flinched as he leaned forward, the bandaged gash in his thigh stinging as his weight fell on it.

"Stop overanalysing, Michael," he hissed. "I don't care if the other inmates have put you up on a pedestal. I'm not going to grovel for answers."

"I wasn't asking you to grovel. Although I've seen more disturbing things in prison – okay." Michael raised his hands as Mahone's fingers twitched. "You've been keeping more than a few inmates up at night on our cell row. They asked me to tell you to turn it down. I think they figured the fact I'm still alive meant you'd actually hear me out instead of attacking me."

Kneading his neck, Mahone observed the cell block once more, before muttering, "That's it?"

"Yeah."

"I can't help it if I talk in my sleep."

"You don't talk," chuckled Michael. "You yell. A lot."

If Mahone had never seen Michael this conversational before, he'd also never heard him laugh. The entire facade was unnerving him.

"Sedatives would help," he said, sliding off his bunk and inching past Michael to the sink. "But I wouldn't want to give you another reason to look down on me."

Michael gave another guttural laugh as Mahone funnelled water into his mouth from the tap.

"So long as you didn't try to murder someone in the process, I wouldn't care."

In the blink of an eye, Mahone grabbed Michael by the front of his sweatshirt and shoved him against the wall. His teeth bared in a snarl.

"This conversation is over."

The alarm that shot through Michael's eyes disappeared a fraction later as he was just as quickly released. He remained on the ground as Mahone yanked the covers from his lap and settled underneath them on his bunk.

Mahone allowed his anger to simmer for a full minute before he twisted his head to the side and glared at Michael again.

"_What?_"

"This is my cell, too. I can sit where I like."

"If you want to prove – unnecessarily, might I add – that you have the emotional maturity of a teenager, try not talking to me for the rest of the month. How does that work out for you?"

Rolling onto his other side, Mahone squeezed his eyelids shut, blocking out Michael's murmured reply.

The resulting silence was shorter than the last. Mahone opened his eyes as he made out a faint tapping noise. He let out a furious exhalation of breath and turned to see Michael knocking the back of his head against the concrete wall.

"You made your goddamned point!" he blasted, exhaustion the only thing keeping Michael from being throttled. "So help me I will become an insomniac if that means you get your precious silence and leave me the hell alone!"

Michael persisted in bouncing his head back and forth. "It's hard to believe you lasted 14 years as an FBI agent when you're so easy to wind up."

"Not with everyone. Just you."

"I take it sarcasm isn't one of your strong points."

"Do you honestly have nothing better to do than sit here and torture me?" Mahone gritted, sitting upright and bunching his sheets in his hands. "There's a reason I haven't been speaking to you, Michael. I hate speaking to you."

"I know." Stilling his head, Michael adopted the impenetrable look he took on whenever he was set on something. "That's what makes this so fun."

Mahone didn't shift his gaze. He wasn't used to having Michael regard him with anything more than curiosity and fear. The reverence Michael had been enjoying since setting foot inside Elderach had no doubt contributed to his shift in attitude, but Mahone would be damned if that gave his cellmate the power to bully him into any sort of submission.

The thought must have shown on his face. Michael's smile faltered.

"I don't know what Jack told you last week," the younger man said, stifling a yawn that made him that much more human and that much more unsettling, "but we have to make this work. This whole situation isn't a coincidence. There's a plan. He put us together for a reason."

"Yeah, well, the man's insane. He's had a worse year than I have. That should tell you something."

"After everything the Company's done to you, there's a plan in place to bring them down, and you don't care in the slightest?"

"No, Michael. No, I don't, and you know what – neither should you. There's a point where you have to stop. Where you have to say that your brother being exonerated is enough, that the fact you can sleep at night because Fernando Sucre's the only one left out there is enough, that the woman you love being alive is enough. Because you can't touch them. It doesn't stop with them. And the sooner you and Jack and whoever else he's roped into this understand that, the better."

Something strange glimmered in Michael's eyes as Mahone trailed off.

It didn't take much for Mahone to lose his temper. His former line of work had required a certain degree of expertise in blowing up at the slightest hitch in an investigation.

But he rarely lost control as a consequence. Michael was one of the handful of people still alive who could do that to him, and the meltdown that resulted was always the starkest. It was the cornerstone of their bizarre relationship.

Only Mahone hadn't cared three months ago whether or not Michael understood that his mere presence was enough to unhinge him. Back then, Michael had always been able to slip away through a dark maze of tunnels, and Mahone had counted on seeing the back of the fugitive after handing him over to the authorities. They had never had to put up with each other for long.

Now, the days of the Fox River manhunt were behind them. Now, they were stuck together. The last thing Mahone needed was to afford Michael any more emotional leverage.

"Not even my brother can match you for optimism," Michael said at last. "Come on, Alex. I thought you'd enjoy the challenge."

"You are an unbelievably pathetic judge of character."

"Or maybe I need to get to know you better." Mahone was about to retort with a few choice swear words when Michael barrelled right over him. "You know Linc and I pretty much grew up in foster care, right?"

Laughing in disbelief before catching himself, Mahone replied, "I could not care less about your unhappy childhood."

"That wasn't my point. As I was saying – the foster homes. We moved around a lot. The carers we received usually didn't have other kids around. But there was this one summer – we swept the lottery. We got this elderly couple. They had this grandniece who was staying with them as well. They were so nice."

The corners of Michael's mouth twitched and he stared off for a moment, as though the memory was particularly deserving of a reprieve. Mahone felt a pang in his chest which quashed the urge to roll his eyes.

"Anyway," Michael continued, training on Mahone again, "the grandniece avoided us at first. Linc teased her a lot, but I knew he was just scared that she was a girl. So I threw a tantrum until they agreed to take me on a campout in the backyard. I came up with a game to get them talking to each other. They were perfect after that – she became our best friend. Linc was the happiest that summer I've ever seen him since. And all it took was a few questions."

"You want to play Twenty Questions?" asked Mahone, voice flat.

"Something like that. We take turns asking questions. Each question can only produce a yes or a no. Each person who produces a yes gets to ask another question. You can't ask a question you already know the answer to. First person who gets three yeses in a row wins."

"Please tell me the winner gets to experience all over again the sheer hilarity your boredom spews forth."

"I'm serious," Michael said, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on top of them. "You get to ask anything you like. You know I won't be able to pass off a lie. And if you win, I'll leave you alone for the rest of your sentence here."

Mahone allowed the temptation of Michael's offer to sink in. He knew his cellmate better, though, and fell back on suspicion.

"What do you get if I lose?"

"I get to ask you one question that isn't as simple as yes or no, and you have to respond with the complete and utter truth."

"Christ, Michael. This is prison, not Scout Camp Redux."

"It won't hurt, will it?"

Simultaneously perplexed and annoyed by the seriousness in Michael's gaze and the loss of the last vestiges of his chance at sleep, Mahone caved. He stopped tugging at the hem of his shirt and gestured with his hands.

"Fire away."

"You sure you don't want to go first?"

Mahone sneered at the challenge in Michael's words. "Since you're so convinced you're going to win this – I am."

"Okay." Michael ran a hand over his shaved head, which was already showing signs of black stubble. "First question. If killing me meant bringing Pam back to life, would you do it?"

Silence.

"Don't pretend you don't know what I'm going to say to that."

"I really don't."

Frowning as he sensed that Michael's play on his pride was heading in a darker direction, Mahone waited another moment before saying, "Yes."

"If killing Jack Bauer meant bringing Pam back to life, would you do it?"

"What is this, a Quantico mental health evaluation? Last time I checked, you were a structural engineer, not a psychopathologist."

"Yes, or no, Alex –"

"Yeah," Mahone snapped. "I would do you in, and I would do him in. In fact, there's nothing I wouldn't say no to except hurting my own son if it meant getting her back. So stop asking me about her."

"Fine." Triumph was already written into Michael's features. "Would you choose getting out of here and being with Cameron again over going back and undoing everything that the Company made you do?"

Anger Mahone hadn't felt since his first day at Elderach reared its head as he answered, "No."

"I think you would, actually."

"Look, you weren't the only one who turned himself in, alright? I deserve jail. They didn't deserve to die. Is that what you want to hear? That all the blame shouldn't be laid on the genius who manufactured the escape in the first place?"

The shadows on Michael's face multiplied as he frowned.

"Okay. Your turn."

Mahone sighed. "Were you hit on the head as a very small child?"

"Please, Alex. You tracked me and Linc across the country for weeks on end. There has to be something."

As they stared at each other, something in Michael's expression triggered Mahone's curiosity.

"Do you think you're better than me?"

"Yes," replied Michael without hesitation.

"Do you wish your father was still alive and I was dead in his place?"

"Yes."

Mahone found himself laughing in the face of Michael's earnestness.

"Fair enough. But let me get this straight. One more yes, and we never talk again, right?"

Michael nodded.

"Did you have any idea that Sara was so broken up when you left her that she had to go about saving someone else, and now she's adopting my son?"

Disappointment flooded Michael's narrowed eyes as he whispered, "Yes."

"Great. Have a good life, Michael."

Mahone slumped onto his back. He stared at the wall as Michael finally got to his feet. He could see out of the corner of his eye that a wounded puppy had wrestled control of his cellmate's face.

"There's one more thing I have to say," Michael said, still hushed. "The grandniece I was telling you about. I was going to ask you how she died. Whether or not she suffered."

Mahone scoffed. "How could I possibly know the details of your childhood buddy's death?"

"Because the people you worked for killed her."

The abject shift in Michael's tone from sadness to fury forced Mahone to look at him. He was taken aback by the coldness that greeted his gaze.

"I don't expect you to remember one name out of the dozens of murders they facilitated. But I'll try. Veronica Donovan. She was the one who first told me about the Company. And you know what I did? Nothing. I was so focused on pulling off the escape that I left her to fight them by herself. She got in too deep when I should've protected her, and now she's gone."

Swallowing in spite of himself, Mahone murmured, "I don't know who –"

"It doesn't matter. You keep missing the point. Jack's offering us another chance. If we help him, it might mean Veronica didn't die in vain. That Pamela didn't die in vain. Did you think I like being anywhere near you any more than you do me? The only reason I've put up with you – put up with the constant insults, the death glares, the memory of my father bleeding to death in my arms because of you – is because I can't sleep at night knowing the Company's still out there, and for some reason, Jack thinks you can help bring them down along with me. I know you're going to refuse when he visits tomorrow and tells us what he needs us to do. I just thought appealing to whatever's left of your conscience might improve his chances of convincing you."

Mahone had barely formulated a rebuttal when Michael pulled himself onto the top bunk. Silence reigned.

His eyes burned holes into the mattress above him. He wasn't sure why Michael's spitefulness grated so badly for him. Nevertheless, he opened his mouth several times, trying to find a way to defend himself.

Each time, however, he called back to another instance when he had endangered the life of someone close to his cellmate.

The bruises he had sustained from the fight two days earlier began to smart. Touching them gingerly, he recalled a period years ago when it had been his job to impart the same treatment to Company prisoners. He wondered whether the full circle Elderach represented was a cause for resignation or renewed action.

"Michael," he said, startling himself.

The springs above him creaked as Michael shifted on his mattress.

"Alex," came the stilted reply.

"What's it like?"

Another pause.

"It'd help if you told me what you're referring to."

A metal clang from the floor below broke Mahone out of his reverie. It occurred to him at the same time that he already had his answer. And it hadn't come to him after spending weeks chasing his cellmate across the country. Or obsessing about proving him the inferior man.

He'd had his reason from the very start.

"Alex?"

Mahone shut his eyes and rolled onto his side. His skin crawled as he felt Michael staring at him again, and he spat out his final words.

"Forget it."

* * *

_Disclaimer:__ All characters belong to either Joel Surnow or Paul Scheuring … and Fox. None of them are mine. Repeat for all other chapters and Fin._


	2. The Alpha Stage

_Chapter 2: __The Alpha Stage_

* * *

The gun in Jack's holster was missing.

Unloading the last of the utensils into the kitchen drawer, he reached around with his other hand and patted his hip, thinking that he must have tucked the weapon into his waistband. He went rigid as he heard a clicking noise behind him.

"You know, I'm trying to think how this would help in unpacking a cartload of boxes, but all I can come up with is that you were planning to leave this as a present."

He spun around in time to see his weapon being placed on the countertop. Grimacing, he picked it up and stowed it away as he met amused hazel eyes.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I must have taken it out when I removed my coat. Detroit's an oven today compared to D.C. –"

"You didn't drop in on your way to Elderach just to help me shift luggage," Sara interrupted, folding her arms. "Jack, the next time you want to sweep the place for bugs and make sure that Cameron and I aren't being monitored by the Company, just tell me."

He chuckled. Sara had proven several times since they'd met that she didn't need to be coddled. Her indignation was amusing, nevertheless.

"I thought you had enough on your mind," he said, moving aside as she lifted a heavy box from the floor. "Besides, I've gotten pretty used to renovation over the last few weeks."

Prying the box open and removing a stack of plates, Sara didn't reply, face tight. Even though Jack had been distracted enough by his upcoming visit to Elderach Penitentiary to leave his weapon lying out in the open, the meaning behind her expression wasn't lost on him.

"So you and Audrey are based in Washington now, huh?" she said at last.

"Yeah," he replied, grateful the person Sara had been thinking about ever since his arrival on her front porch wasn't going to be broached.

Her smile thinned. "You guys doing okay?"

"We're taking it one step at a time. She's settling into a new managerial position at NSA. Her father's within driving distance. And I'm also – gainfully employed."

"Oh, right. Classified spook work."

"Yeah."

The cumbersome silence that had become a staple of Jack's interactions with those who were aware of his last two years in China settled again. He had grown to tolerate people feeling sorry for him. He wasn't sure what to make of Sara's pity, however – she had lost so much as well.

While they had been hiding out in a FBI safehouse in Idaho, Audrey and Sara had shared their experiences and quickly become friends. Audrey had listened to Sara's entire story. She had been the one lobbying hardest to produce a pardon for the former doctor and Lincoln Burrows. Because of her, President Heller had reviewed the facts, and ultimately given in.

Audrey hadn't been able to do much, however, when Sara had been banned from practising medicine for the next ten years.

While Sara had obtained a teaching job since and still managed to light up wherever Cameron was concerned, Audrey worried about her wellbeing. She had asked Jack before he'd left for the airport the previous evening to check up on her.

It hadn't occurred to him until he'd rung Sara's doorbell that he was terrible at social calls.

"Uh – look," he began, reaching for his coat and keys. "Since you're set here, why don't you drive out with me to Elderach? We can pick up Cameron from school on the way back and I'll drop you both home."

Sara was polite in her discomfort.

"I already arranged a trip next weekend," she replied, inclining her head. "Lincoln and LJ are flying up from Chicago. I wanted to give Cam a chance to get to know them before we went to see Mich- … them."

The shift from name to pronoun was less than subtle. Jack fidgeted.

He had been told enough by Audrey to understand that Michael had shunned everyone during their stay at the safehouse. The con had been particularly cold to Sara. While Jack was sure she knew by now that it had been Michael's odd way of protecting her, she had been hit hard when she'd woken up to discover that the man had left for prison without so much as a goodbye.

It was melodrama Jack could do without.

"I should go then," he said, starting for the door.

"Sure." Sara's eyes were hollow as she followed Jack to the entrance hall. "Thanks for stopping by. Tell Audrey to call whenever she's in town."

Jack peered at her, perturbed. "Take care of yourself, Sara."

"Will do."

Giving her an awkward pat on the back, he headed down the driveway and climbed into his SUV. Starting the engine, he glanced at the front door in time to see Sara retreating behind it.

He felt guilt anew as he loaded the coordinates to Elderach on his dashboard computer. Michael had made clear when he'd turned himself in that he wanted nothing more than for her to be protected at all costs.

It made the success of Jack's plan that much more critical.

* * *

Sara had managed to procure a house close to Elderach – no doubt for Cameron's benefit rather than her own – making the drive a short one. Flashing his ID and driving through the prison gates, Jack sequestered her to the back of his mind.

The more pertinent issue at the moment was how the proposal he was preparing to shift into gear would be taken. Even as he was searched, stripped of his sidearm, and buzzed through past the entrance lobby, he found himself worrying.

While Michael had suspected yet raised no complaint that his sentence wouldn't be the end of his involvement in taking down the Company, his cellmate had been less facetious by comparison. Jack understood that being newly widowed and having the life of his only child threatened numerous times hadn't improved Mahone's willingness to return to the firing line.

Nor the chance that he would ever cooperate with the man he held largely responsible.

But everything fell on them. It was enough for Jack to rue the reliability of his sources and their intel.

"Federal agent Jack Bauer, mam," he said, arriving at the reception desk which separated the waiting room from the visitation area. "I have an appointment scheduled for 10 am."

The clerk raised an eyebrow in interest. "You booked in last week to see the Fox River guys, didn't you?"

"That's right."

"Heaps of people have been trying to bribe out an interview with those two," the middle-aged woman went on. "Every three-letter news station has been knocking on our door."

Jack stared at her. "Yes, but I'm here on legitimate government business –"

"Feist down. I know who you are."

Wetting her thumb, the clerk flicked through the log book and pushed it towards him. Taking her proffered pen, he began to fill out a fresh page. He sniffed as he scrawled in his details, trying to ignore the woman's musings.

"'Course, you and them are all anyone's been talking about around here. Guards can't figure out how they ended up together. Especially with that crazy Fed losing it like he did last Thursday."

"What?" Jack's head snapped up. "What are you talking about?"

"Warden Beltrov's confined the guy to his cell for the rest of the week. He didn't call you?" When Jack shook his head, the clerk shrugged and continued, "Big fight. One guard got a concussion breaking it up. They nearly had a riot on their hands. And Mahone nearly got – well, dead."

Rubbing his forehead, Jack muttered, "Tell me he didn't start it."

"I did just tell you the warden's punishing him. But whatever you need to say to Scofield, he can pass on to Mahone, right?"

"Beltrov knows I have to see them together, in private, today. It's important."

"You should probably bring it up with him." The clerk nodded to Jack's left. "Bit further down the main corridor, turn right past the transfer room and you'll get to his office."

Jack planted his hands on the desk, keeping himself from yelling out his frustration. Regaining his composure, he thanked the clerk and made his way back towards the hallway.

"Do you want me to call his receptionist and have her squeeze in a meeting?"

"No, thank you," he replied over his shoulder.

Sweeping through the transfer room and climbing up the stairs to Beltrov's office, Jack cursed both him and Mahone under his breath. A curly-haired woman glanced over the top of her computer as he appeared on the landing.

"Sir, can I help you?"

He took no heed of her. Stalking past, he threw the door at the end of the hallway open and entered over the receptionist's protests. Beltrov spun around from a file cabinet in the corner. His expression went from annoyance to anger in all of one second.

"Jonathon, you son of a bitch, I told you specifically that it was imperative I see Mahone today as well as Scofield."

"Sir, I tried to tell him how busy you were."

Beltrov wiped his mouth, dropping the folder in his hands onto his desk. Regarding Jack, he sat and gestured at the chair opposite.

"It's okay, Liz."

Lowering his gaze at the receptionist's grudging look, Jack took a seat. He eyed the wall clock as the door closed behind him.

"Regulations and protocol not a problem for you as usual, Bauer?" the warden continued. "You may have Presidential authority, but this is still my prison. Nobody is above the rules here. Your boy –"

"I know what Alex did," Jack cut in, using his best impression of calm. "But you have no idea what's at stake."

"Then cut the crap and tell me. I appreciate that this is eyes-only stuff we're talking about here. The last thing I want is to get involved with problems involving national security. All I want –" Breaking off, Beltrov followed Jack's gaze to his wall clock. "Alright. If you still want to keep me out of the loop and gloss over that I agreed to make cellmates out of two prisoners with that kind of history between them, then we're done. You get Scofield today. That's it."

The lights went out.

Jack's hackles rose in an instant as Beltrov swore. Adjusting his eyes to the darkness, Jack followed the warden as he stood and opened the window curtains. The desk phone was seized a moment later. Ice further gripped Jack's chest as Beltrov shook his head.

"Line's gone." Beltrov tapped a few keyboard strokes into his computer. "Jesus Christ. Everything's gone dead. Jesus fucking Christ!"

"What is it?"

The sudden change in colour on Beltrov's face propelled Jack around the desk. Glancing over his shoulder, Jack made out various images on the monitor that didn't warrant closer inspection for him to get the message – something was more than a little wrong.

"This isn't happening," Beltrov said, banging on the keyboard and negating Jack's previous belief that he was incapable of emoting fear. "Electricity is out for the entire grid, including the ports that control all of the cell blocks. That's never happened in the decade it was last upgraded."

"I don't understand the problem. Your computer's still working."

"No, that's the problem." Pulling out a radio receiver from his desk drawer, Beltrov punched in some numbers. "All of the backup generators are operational except for the two connected to Elderach's security mainframe. They don't just shut down at the same time – Greg, it's John. You there?"

Jack scanned the rest of the office as Beltrov was met with silence.

"What weapons do you have on hand?"

"I don't have anything in here that can kill anyone, if that's what you're aiming for. Don't overreact yet. It's probably just a kernel glitch."

"There's not gonna be any time to figure that out if prisoners are out of their cells and lockdown procedures are offline. Something bad's going down, Jonathon, I can feel it."

"Gee, you think?" snapped Beltrov, slamming the radio down. "Every time you show up here, there's always something. You organised this, didn't you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't screw with me. You show your face and today of all days the power fails and the generators keeping the entire place from being overrun by cons kicks it in as well? Five seconds later and you're reaching for the guns already?"

"I already told you the reason why I'm here," Jack hissed, backing up and retrieving his cell phone as Beltrov got to his feet. "Damn it, this is exactly what I wanted to prepare Scofield and Mahone for. That's why I had to see them both – to warn them. They're targets. I don't know how, but the people that are after them found out I was going to be here today!"

A shotgun blast followed by a high-pitched scream burst into life from outside.

Shoving his cell back into his coat, Jack grabbed Beltrov by the shoulders and pulled him down behind his desk. Running a hand over the desk's surface, he found a pair of scissors and tucked it into his palm.

"Jesus Christ, what the hell's going on – Liz is out there, let go of me!"

"You want to live through this, then shut up!"

Beltrov went still as shadows unaccompanied by audible footsteps appeared through the crack under the door. Waving at the warden to keep out of sight, Jack scrambled to the blind spot beside the office entrance.

He hadn't even raised the scissor blades before the door crashed open. Reacting on instinct at the sight of a steel-capped boot, he latched onto the most vulnerable body part and twisted.

A howl of pain erupted as the ankle ligaments tore apart. Tossing the scissors aside, Jack sprung forward and took hold of the shotgun in his assailant's hands. Flipping it downwards, he smashed the butt into the man's contorted face.

The agent collapsed as Jack wrenched the shotgun from his grip.

"If you do not wish for this woman to die, keep your finger off the trigger and surrender the weapon."

A copper-haired man was approaching him, grinding a pistol into the receptionist's cheek at the same time. Jack met the woman's gaze as more agents arrived on the floor. Accessing the automatic weapons on display and the numbers he was facing, he dropped the gun.

"Step behind you into the room, kneel on the ground and put your hands on your head," the leader continued. He stopped short of Jack and raised his voice. "Mr. Beltrov, I would advise you to follow those latter two instructions as well."

Doing as he was told, Jack saw that the scissors had disappeared. He glared at Beltrov as he lowered himself next to him. Signalling with his eyes, he gave a quick shake of his head while the receptionist joined them on the floor. Beltrov slid the utensil out of sight.

"We're in the warden's office," the copper-haired man relayed over a transceiver hanging from his shirt collar, entering the room along with five others. "Are the guards secured?"

The receptionist gave a squeak as Beltrov's desk was pitched onto its side, sending papers everywhere and leaving them in a more exposed opening. Jack kept his eyes down. He listened as a gruff voice informed the leader that the guards outside of the cell blocks and the rest of the prison workers were being gathered in the entrance lobby.

His heart sank as the agent continued that gen pop had been placed under control, but a malfunction had allowed the inmates out of their cells before they could be properly locked in. They had made it as far as the main corridor and promptly overrun the west wing.

"Our concern is the visitation sector," the leader replied, unruffled. "The target objectives should be there. Any sightings, report in."

The moans of the agent whose ankle Jack had broken was the only sound for a moment. At last, a new voice crackled to life.

"Sir, it's Tate. We had the kid trapped, but some other cons attacked us and he slipped out. I don't think Mahone was even here. Sir, we've got a hundred prisoners standing between them and our team."

Jack chanced a look up at the leader. The man's placid eyes were already studying him. His entire visage wasn't the one Jack had been expecting. It was the same one he saw in the mirror every morning – one too experienced with death.

"Sir? Should we launch a raid or abandon the mission?"

The leader's mouth quirked. "No. That isn't an option with Kingswood. Stand down and keep the perimeter until further notice."

The deep breaths Beltrov was taking shallowed out as the copper-haired man clicked the radio off and stood over him. Jack remained stoic as the man's pistol prodded against Beltrov's forehead.

"You have access to the facility's intercom from here," the leader said. "Give me the code to the control panel that links the network so my technician can open up a transmission stream."

Beltrov glanced past the barrel of the gun towards an agent who was heaving a metal board into view.

"That's for pre-recorded messages and automatic responses only. You can't transmit anything live through it –"

A gun blast cut him off. Jack turned his head, startled, as the receptionist shrank into herself. A trail of smoke curled through the air inches apart from Beltrov's face.

"3S30WF0407," the warden reeled out, punctuating the code with a stammer. He eyed his receptionist as he repeated it. "I don't care if you kill me. Let Elizabeth out of here. She has a husband and two boys to go home to."

The leader ignored the plea as he watched his technician plug what looked to be a PDA-phone into the control panel. Affirming that it would be ready in five minutes, he faced Jack again.

"If we all took heed of family, we wouldn't last long in this business. Partiality breeds idiocy. For instance – if I may so address the issue, Mr. Bauer. Your source's partiality for money overrode her desire to stay in hiding from the Company."

"She double-crossed me." Jack's brief disquiet elicited a sneer from the leader. "What did you do to her?"

"Having been on the receiving end of that woman's previous betrayal to Hable myself, I fail to see why you care."

Squatting down so that he was eye to eye with Jack, the leader continued, "But I do care about what she refused to divulge before she was disposed of. You arranged a confidential meeting with Mahone and Scofield today. There must be a reasoning behind that. Concerning the Sona project, most likely."

"My reasons had nothing to do with whatever you're talking about."

Not fooled, the leader drifted further into Jack's personal space. Before he could say more, however, his technician raised the PDA-phone.

"It's hooked in, sir. Whatever you say into this will broadcast throughout the whole prison."

The leader straightened and caught the PDA-phone as it was tossed to him. Jack blinked at the ground. His thoughts raced underneath the tapping of the device against the copper-haired man's chin.

Finally, the leader cleared his throat.

"Attention, inmates Alexander Mahone and Michael Scofield," he said, shifting away from Jack. "I wish to keep this as succinct as possible."

Jack had barely acknowledged the flash of the gun in the leader's hand before it fired again.

There was the slump of a body, followed by a stunned silence. Jack felt his mouth go slack as Beltrov's opened in horror.

The next second, Beltrov was leaping over the receptionist's motionless figure, roaring out a litany of curses over and over again. Two of the agents forced him back, and a third bashed him in the face with his machine gun. The warden dropped, out cold.

The leader hadn't moved.

"I trust that neither of you missed that," he pressed on into the phone, wiping blood off his arm. "You both are smart men. You both know who we are – what we are capable of, and what we want. If you surrender to the soldiers waiting in the east wing, the rest of this will be painless."

Jack winced as his right hand was pulled behind him and fastened to Beltrov's wrist with a pair of cuffs. He felt sick at the sight of blood pooling around the receptionist's head.

"As an additional incentive, however, I am providing an ultimatum for the rest of the prisoners listening. In the next ten minutes, the first person who finds Mahone and Scofield, and delivers them unharmed to my men, is assured a free pass out of Elderach. They will also receive ten thousand hard cash and a ticket on an unchartered flight to a country of their choice."

The copper-haired man hesitated. He traced the barrel of his gun through the air, landing it on an emotionless face.

"There is no way out, Alexander. There is no way out, Michael. If either of you run, you will be responsible for the deaths of the fifty other people I have captive outside. Including the man I am looking at right now – including your friend – Agent Jack Bauer."


	3. Hell All Over Again

_Chapter 3: Hell All Over Again_

* * *

"Hey, Mr. FBI. Did you beg the warden to ban your punk ass from being allowed back out here? Can't face the music or what?"

Mahone looked up from the cryptogram book in his hands. He had spent the last hour stewing over the single luxury Jack had been allowed to deliver to him. His lack of sleep had hindered any success at completing even one puzzle, however.

The gigantic African-American man banging on his cell door wasn't improving things.

"What do you want, Elkins?" he drawled, adjusting his reading glasses. "I have no problem fighting you again with a stab wound if you have no problem fighting me again with a broken arm."

The runt-faced man swelled, making him appear even more enormous. Mahone smirked as his gaze travelled from Elkins' sling to the various bruises and gashes his companions were sporting.

"You lucky that Scofield boy wants you treated nice," Elkins hissed. "Otherwise you'd be a dead man this time next week."

Mahone set his work down. A few of the inmates who had come off worse the wear when he'd fought them the day before last stepped back a little as he approached the metal bars.

"That's odd," he said, voice so low that Elkins had to lean in to hear him, "because I don't recall ever asking him to defend me. You think I need defending? I think you're just a little afraid of what I could do to you – really do to you – without your lapdogs holding me back."

There was silence from Mahone's audience save for Elkins' uneasy chortle. After a moment, he signalled to a prisoner behind him. Mahone's expression continued to approach glacial levels as the inmate stepped forward and handed Elkins a tray of food.

"Talk tough when there ain't a locked door between us," jeered Elkins. "Oh, and by the way. I offered to bring up your breakfast from the mess hall after Michael scampered off to visitation."

Upturning the tray, Elkins smashed it over the ground. Mahone watched as his food oozed across the concrete. His tormentors walked off, laughing, and he sighed.

Though he had received five years for crimes that warranted a death sentence, Mahone had had to accept that he would receive no special treatment. He would be placed among prisoners who by all means would tear him apart. He also, as Jack had put it, would be required to pass along and verify information concerning the Company, jeopardising Cameron's safety yet again.

And, of course, no mention had been made that a certain engineer would be his cellmate.

Michael had been absent when Mahone had woken that morning. The ruckus the man made before they were let out of their cells had come to be a reliable alarm clock. Today, however, Michael had quieted down to the point where Mahone had slept in. Mahone suspected that it had been deliberate on his part.

Draping himself facedown on his bunk, he pushed the cryptograms onto the floor. However much he hated Michael, he couldn't stand being alone with himself more.

Adding the time he'd been in the infirmary, he hadn't been outside in four days. It was a remnant of his childhood that he was past the point of going stir crazy. Long stretches of time spent indoors always reminded him of the days when he'd been locked up inside his room for one misdemeanour after another. Memories of cowering on his bed each night, helpless and scared, as the front door had opened and his father had returned home from work always goaded his claustrophobia.

It was a weakness that irritated him. And he was irritated – irritated that Warden Beltrov had punished him for defending himself. Irritated that the other inmates were still looking to make him the prison bitch.

And irritated at the likelihood that Michael and Jack were currently discussing a plan that would drag him back into the mess he wanted to leave behind.

A roar of metal stirred Mahone awake. He yawned, half-imagining that his cell door was rolling back from the wall. It wasn't until the lights went dead that he jerked upright.

"Back into your cells, cons!"

The bellowed order reverberated throughout the cell block, snapping Mahone into reality. Limping to his open cell entrance, his eyes widened as he was greeted by the sight of dozens of inmates spilling across the floor. Their masses were surrounding the five lone guards on duty.

Every other cell in sight had been unlocked. More prisoners were materializing on the two upper tiers. Backing against each other, the guards were looking tinier and more vulnerable by the second.

"I said back into your –"

Mahone felt the agent in him take over as an inmate grabbed a baton from the guard in charge and swung it back into his ribcage. He ducked back into his cell as shrieks and catcalls assaulted his ears. Picking apart his bunk and searching through his possessions, his eyes roved for a weapon.

Something on the sink counter caught his eye. Sweeping the rest of the items onto the ground, he picked up Michael's razor blade. As he ran its edge over his thumb before stuffing it into his trouser pocket, satisfied that it hadn't been dulled to the point of uselessness, he heard the low rumbling of his cell door behind him.

He spun around in time to see the door beginning to lock into place. Diving forward, he made it out just before it closed completely.

It was only as he stood on the second row landing, eyeing the chaos of the attack on the guards below and the efforts of the smarter cons in breaking out of the cell block, that he swore at his gut instinct. It had overridden what his common sense had told him – that straying out of his cell would get him killed.

Except something more was going on. And on the exact date that Jack had chosen to visit.

Running down the row and descending the stairs, he reached the thick of the mob just as the barrier between the cell block and the main hallway submitted to the prisoners throwing themselves against it. The relative darkness helped him blend in as gleeful shouts filled the air.

"Where are you?" he muttered, remaining behind and searching the walls as his fellow inmates began to flee. "Come on –"

At the same time that the narrow corridor on his radar came into view, a hand snaked around his ankle. He glanced down, ready to defend himself for all he was worth. His impulse to kick out was tempered as he recognised a guard's battered visage.

"Help me," the man implored, staring up at Mahone through twin black eyes. "Please – help."

Attempting to drag himself up by clutching at Mahone's leg, the guard soon gave up and sank back onto the ground. Mahone stared. His gaze veered from the pathetic creature before him to the four other guards lying nearby in various states of unconsciousness, one still being pummelled by an inmate. He glanced back towards the corridor with equal ambivalence.

Of course it wasn't right to leave any of the guards behind. By that same measure, however, he couldn't hope to drag all of them to safety without attracting attention.

Racking his brain to come to a decision, he had a mad thought back to his Division 5 days. Morality had been so much easier then – he had never been allowed to utilise it. It had always been about following orders. Even going into the FBI, he had chosen to specialise in an area where the line between good and bad was as clear-cut as it could be, and where, for the most part, he could do as he was told without placing innocent lives in danger.

Machine gun fire interrupted his flow of thought.

If Mahone had doused himself with enough denial to ignore the Company's signature practices, the blare of its elite strike team's signature Uzis brought him back to earth even harder. He grappled to control his panic as feral cries and the sound of bodies hitting the ground echoed back into the cell block from outside.

Bending down to the guard at his feet, he gritted, "Get up."

The man groaned as Mahone draped the arm that appeared to be the least torn up around his shoulder. Wincing as he was forced to favour his left leg and endure the pain that shot through his bandaged wound, he staggered with the guard across the floor and down the hallway he had spotted earlier.

It was the same corridor he had been dragged through the last time he'd seen Jack. Though it lay off in a corner practically invisible in light of the main entrance to the cell block, Mahone knew it was only a matter of time before prisoners were driven back inside by the gunfire and impelled to use a new exit.

Reaching the end of the hallway, he dumped the guard on the floor and inspected the gateway blocking them from the transfer room. It had two doors – one metal-barred and one solid. Grasping the knob of the former, he wasn't surprised to find it was locked.

"Hey." He slapped the guard's cheeks, pulling him out of his groggy stupor. "Still trying to save your life here, pal. Work with me."

The guard's eyes widened as Mahone seized his lower chin and turned his head towards the door. Catching on to what was needed, the man struggled to work his throat.

"Front pocket. Inside – inside my jacket." Ferreting around where he'd been pointed to, Mahone produced a set of keys. The guard caught his hand as he retracted it, however, shaking his head. "You can't – you need someone else – the other door doesn't – it doesn't –"

"Doesn't what? Hey. What doesn't it – son of a bitch."

Mahone leaned back on his haunches, swearing as the guard flopped against the wall. Returning to the barred door, he set about testing each key. When he succeeded in unlocking the first door, however, it became apparent what the guard had been referring to.

The second door had no handle.

"Son of a _bitch_!" he exclaimed, pounding on the bare surface. "Hey! If anyone can hear me, there's a guard down over here and four more outside. Open up!"

He could make out footsteps on the other side of the door. Despite that, nobody responded. Just as he resolved to go back and retrieve the rest of the guards, the last voice he wanted or expected to hear called his name out to him.

Raising his eyes to the ceiling, asking how much more could go wrong, he replied, "Michael?"

"What's going on? I was waiting for Jack, but armed commandos showed up instead. I only just got out."

"I don't know. Look, would you open the door?" There was a pause as Mahone hoisted the inert guard around his shoulders again. "Michael?"

"It's funny how one night ago you bargained never to have anything to do with me or doing the right thing again, yet today you're so eager to help out the guards and get out of the crossfire at the same time."

Mahone nearly dropped the guard in his anger.

"You pathetic moron – Michael, any other day you can throw that back into my face. But right now I am telling you that there are guards out here who need our help. Open the damn door!"

"Let me guess. All of them are too beaten up to verify that what you're saying is actually true."

"I swear to God, I will kill you if you don't –"

"Attention, inmates Alexander Mahone and Michael Scofield."

Mahone froze as a voice quite removed from the usual robotic monotone came forth over the speaker system. Before he could make sense of it, the message was punctuated in perfect rhythm by a gun shot, and the thud of a body.

Adrenaline surged through his veins as a struggle erupted through the intercom. Beltrov's cries died abruptly, and the calm voice resumed command of the speakers. By the time the man had finished reeling out his demands, Mahone was banging on the door again.

"That good enough for you, Siegfried?"

The crank of an unfastening metal bolt answered him. Retreating a few steps, he watched as the door swung outwards, revealing his cellmate. Michael's wary expression fell away as he caught sight of the guard.

"Idiot," clenched out Mahone, his supporting shoulder starting to go numb. "Take his other side."

Michael did so, looping the guard through his arm and helping to carry him towards a bench against the wall. Dropping the man onto it, Mahone wasted no time in hurrying back to the two doors. Belying his haste, he shut both of the barriers and locked them instead of returning to the cell block.

When he turned back around, Michael's eyes were seared with animosity.

"The other guards matter a whole lot less now, huh?" When Mahone ignored him, sweeping towards the south-side exit of the transfer room, Michael stepped sideways, blocking his path. "Where are you going, Alex?"

"I'll give you a hint. Not the east wing."

"Are you out of your mind?" Michael was whispering as though they were already surrounded. "You heard what they just said – what they just did. They have hostages … they have Jack … Alex, you are not doing this."

Mahone flinched as his cellmate planted a hand on his chest. Slowly meeting Michael's gaze, he hissed, "Do what you want. I am not sticking around to try and be the hero, do you understand me?"

"I can't let you walk away."

"I invite you to give me another option," Mahone said, sneering. "Get out of my way, Michael. Get out of my way, or I will _make_ you –"

The fist came out of nowhere. Even though Michael had moved fast enough to catch him off guard, Mahone still managed to dodge the blow. Trapping Michael's arm in an iron grip, he rammed his cellmate's knee, off-balancing him, before throwing him over his shoulder.

Michael made no noise as he crashed onto the floor. His mouth pressed into a thin line of pain as he rolled onto his back. Mahone leaned over his body, eyes blazing.

"You're trying to save lives, and I respect you for it," he snarled. "But don't you ever try to pull that again."

"If you leave, you'll have innocent blood on your hands. You'll be signing Jack's death warrant. After everything he's done for you."

"God, Michael – that's how they want you to think. Giving ourselves up won't do anything. They're going to kill every last captive no matter what we do."

"You're conjecturing!"

"Because I'm trying to save my own skin?" Mahone yelled back. "I'm not making excuses – I'm telling you the truth, and you should know that. Has it slipped your mind that easily? How the Company likes to tie up loose ends? They didn't order me to put the cons you broke out into the ground so they could give me a medal afterwards!"

Fury crossing his features, Michael came at Mahone again, only to have Mahone's foot slam him back onto the ground.

"Point made. End of discussion."

"Alex!" Michael sat up as Mahone turned away and continued towards the south-side exit. "I do remember. I remember the last time you tried to run from the Company. They killed your wife for it."

Mahone went rigid. Facing Michael once more, he barely managed to speak through his rage.

"What did you just say?"

"And they'll get to Cameron as well," Michael continued, struggling to his feet with one hand clutched to his chest. "But go ahead. Try to get to him first."

Advancing closer, Mahone halted with as much spontaneity when the low rattling of rubber against concrete reached his ears. Michael took heed of his expression and made to question him, only to be cut off by a deep, amused growl.

"Well, if my ten grand ain't fightin' with my all-expenses-paid airplane ride out of the country."

Mahone went for the razor in his hip pocket as no less than a dozen prisoners emerged from the doorway adjacent to the cell block exit.

Following Mahone's look, Michael retreated along with him. Instead of demonstrating any awareness that the rattling noises hadn't stopped, he addressed the man standing front row and centre.

"Elkins, you know as well as I do that you can't take these people at their word. The minute you show up with us, they'll put a bullet in your head."

"Shut it, Scofield," replied the massive inmate, shooting a warning glare at Mahone at the same time. "And you – pull a knife on me this round and I'll have to reconsider handing you over alive. No guards or bars holding me back now."

Mahone tore his eyes away, roving the area as Michael persisted with his entreaty. Turning a deaf ear and mistaking Mahone's distractedness for surrender, Elkins nodded at his cronies to restrain them.

"I respect what you represent, man, but I ain't about to pass up the chance to skip over the rest of my life sentence, get me?"

"Maybe you didn't understand me. There is no way they're going to –"

Grabbing Michael by the neck, Mahone ended the possibility of further confrontation by wrenching him to the floor. The other inmates had no time to react before the blast of pressurized fumes escaping their confines burst through the room. Moments later, the tear gas pouring from multiple canisters was toppling them over each other.

Eyes welded shut, Mahone dragged his cellmate away from the onslaught. Michael marred his efforts by shifting like a dead weight. Opening his eyes a fraction, Mahone glimpsed a tranq dart lodged in Michael's forearm, and an accompanying limpness in his drooping head.

It was only then that he registered the stinging in his own arm.

"They led us right to the targets," a disjointed voice called through the fog. "We have two confirmed visuals, sir. Both disengaged."

The gas-masked agent paid dearly for his presumptuousness when Mahone lashed out, tripping his feet out from under him and sending him to the ground.

He lunged for the man's throat. A sudden nauseousness hit his body as he struck, however, and he missed completely as his vision went blurry. Overwhelmed by the fatigue gaining control of his muscles, he collapsed onto his side.

More Company picked their way through the mass of unconscious inmates as Mahone battled to stay awake. Michael was lifted up next to him and dragged away. He prepared to fend off the agents reaching for himself with as much savageness as he could muster.

The halo of masked men chose to split apart at the last second. Blinking rapidly to keep himself alert, Mahone saw a shotgun-bearing agent with tufts of copper hair poking through his gas mask strolling towards him from the south-side exit.

Directly behind him were two more agents. Each carried one end of the body of a curly-haired, and dead, woman. Mahone tasted bile as they stopped in front of him.

"Where's Jack?" he asked, unable to look away from the woman's empty visage.

The copper-haired man tilted his head to the side, silent. He placed his weapon on a nearby table as Mahone's senses grew even fainter.

"Are you afraid you'll be lacking for company on the trip down?" the leader replied at last. "Here. Allow me to dispel that particular anxiety for you."

Mahone felt the syringe stab into his neck before he saw it. Doubling over, he let out a vexed breath, blindsided by the familiarity of the rush that enveloped him. Despite his best efforts, the peace offered by the substance was too tempting.

He succumbed.

* * *

"Le doy un aviso. Quedense por atras!"

Mahone hurtled out of his oblivion as something exploded over the top of his head.

Eyes opening wide, he jerked backwards as the shouts emanating from only a few feet away heightened in volume. Moving on instinct, he barely managed to roll out of the way in time before the door in front of him blew inwards. The darkness of the room he'd woken up in gave way to an agonising light, and he shielded his face with his hands, head pounding.

"Policia! No te mueves! Pon tus manos en tu cabeza!"

Uniformed officers with assault rifles were storming through the gutted doorway. At the same time that Mahone realised he couldn't understand what was being screamed at him due to the fact it was in Spanish – as opposed to gibberish as he'd first assumed – he was tackled facedown onto a moth-eaten carpet.

The daze resonating through him would have succeeded in holding his tongue if handcuffs hadn't been clamped around his wrists a second later.

"What the hell is going on?" he roared. A horrible burning welled in the back of his throat, and he hack coughed. "Who are –"

He broke off as more light flooded the room. Squinting against the glare, he gradually bore into focus his dilapidated surroundings. The place was cramped and unfurnished, save for three wooden tables stacked high with duffel bags. He could also see corkboards hanging from the wall opposite him, blanketed with papers.

One of the officers zipped open a bag, and Mahone craned his neck to make out what was inside. He was hoisted around and shoved over the collapsed door before he could get a good look, however, and finally recalling the events preceding his capture, he lost it.

"Espere un momento."

Mahone continued to struggle as the men restraining him paused at the order. A grey-haired officer stepped up from behind them. His weathered face was grave as he nodded to Mahone's left. His colleagues dumped their charge on a chair against the wall, and Mahone yelled as his head was yanked back. A flashlight shone into his eyes.

"Como te llamas?" the senior officer went on, lowering the flashlight. "De donde eres? Eh? Me entiende?"

Catching the last word, Mahone said, "No. No entiendo. Ingles!"

"Estadounidense," said the officer over his shoulder, and one of his men hurried out of the room. Mahone opened his mouth furiously, but his interrogator raised a hand. "Why are you out from America?"

"Come again?" rasped Mahone. "This is another one of the Company's sick tests, isn't it?" He swivelled his gaze across the ceiling. "If you touch my son, Ryan, I promise you that I won't rest until I kill you. Do you hear me?"

The senior officer's expression didn't change as Mahone was forced back into his seat.

"You understand where you are?"

"No," Mahone replied, grinding his teeth together. "But I was in Detroit. This morning – or yesterday morning, or two mornings ago – I was in Detroit. I don't know how long it's been. People kidnapped me. Killed others. They might have gone after my son. Hey, are you even listening? I need to get back!"

The officer who had earlier been searching the duffel bags was whispering into his superior's ear. Mahone glared as the man passed over several papers. Rifling through them, the senior officer murmured, "Alexander Mahone?"

Mahone reined in his expression until it was as blank as the other man's. "And if I am?"

"La piedra," the second officer said, pointing back to the tables. "Y implementos para el uso de drogas."

"Si." Flicking a hand upwards, the senior officer stood. "Es todo, Senor Mahone. You are under arrest."

"Wait – what?"

Mahone was hauled out of his chair. His attempts to further defend himself were circumvented as he stumbled, another wave of dizziness hitting him. The senior officer looked disgusted as he was pulled upright again.

"Que pasa? You are having delusions because you are high? More disgusting than I thought. We are done."

"What? No, you've got it all wrong, pal. I'm like this because the people who landed me here –"

Glancing over at the tables, Mahone's words caught. The other officers in the room had sorted through the contents of the duffel bags by piling them on top of each other like an illicit brick wall. The sight of it provided an answer for Mahone that defied words.

"Where am I?" he asked, blood running cold. "What is this? What country is this?"

Contempt laced the senior officer's response. Mahone was led out of the room before he could digest the news.

Instead of approaching anything close to stability over the next few hours, Mahone's condition worsened. By the time he had been driven to a local police station and had his photo and prints taken, he had stopped imploring for someone to call the Chicago FBI field office, well and truly believing that he had broken from reality.

It was only when he was taken out of his holding cell to meet with an embassy representative that the Company's deceit hit home.

A tip-off had come in earlier that day leading to Mahone's address. The police who had taken him into custody had found enough crack cocaine in his possession to put him away for twenty years in America, and even longer in Panama. Coupled with the route maps and documents certifying his ownership of a truck that had been unearthed pre-loaded with even more duffel bags, it was an open and shut case.

"You don't even realise how impossible that is. You follow American news, right? Fox River? The fact that … that I have been in custody for the last seven weeks … it should have come up at one point. How could I be freelancing for a Panamanian drug cartel when I've been in prison two thousand miles away?"

The embassy representative was unsympathetic. By the time she departed, she had jettisoned every one of Mahone's proposed avenues for returning home. Her assurances of landing him a court date within the next few days were less than half-hearted.

Night time and rain had begun to fall when Mahone left the police station. Shock ruled out discerning how long it was before the transport van stopped again. Climbing out into mud, he stared at the massive building in front of him. Another van had parked up ahead.

A small local man was being dragged, wailing at the top of his lungs, out of the vehicle and towards the building's iron-wrought entrance. Though Mahone couldn't understand the man's Spanish, his terrified countenance was enough. It was fear borne out of foreknowledge of something with a reputation one step below death's.

Mahone stood motionless as his fellow prisoner disappeared behind the iron gates. Instead of being hustled in the same direction, he was prodded the opposite way until he came to a halt before an arched door. The steel around his wrists was released.

"At end of hallway – go through left door," instructed one of the guards flanking him. "Buena suerte, senor."

The first thing that struck Mahone as the door locked into place behind him was the quiet. Trying to hold onto his wits, he straightened his shoulders and strode forward without sparing a glance at the other inmates dotting the corridor. None of them made a sound. They simply leered.

A scowling man wearing a long-bladed machete on his hip gave Mahone a once over as he came near. Mahone tensed as the man stepped in front of him. However, the man gestured to the door he had been leaning against, and understanding, Mahone opened it and entered.

Though ramshackle to the point of decay, the pulpit at the far end of the room and the aligned benches throughout made obvious its function. A hunched figure sat hugging its knees in the front row. An ancient-looking projector and a dusty screen completed the funereal picture.

"Sit," the machete-wielding man ordered. When Mahone reached the front row and obeyed, the man turned to the projector. "Now wait."

Mahone half-considered snapping the man's neck. Thinking better of it, he instead appraised the room for potential weapons. His eyes glided over the quietly sobbing person cradled on the other end of the bench as he did so.

And then he looked again.

"Michael?"

His cellmate hadn't once crossed his mind since he'd last seen him. Things had happened too quickly for him to grasp anyone else's situation but his own. Seeing Michael cowering and unresponsive, however, his last hope that it was still possible for him to wake from his nightmare disintegrated.

"Michael," he repeated, sliding down the bench until he was next to his cellmate. Peering back towards the projector and garnering no objection from the machete-wielding man, he said in a louder voice, "Michael. Talk to me, you son of a bitch. Look at me. What the hell is wrong with you!"

Gasping when Mahone seized his arm and shook him, Michael finally gazed up from between his knees.

"Don't," he stammered, eyes wide and darting. "Don't. Please. Don't. Please."

Mahone drew back as Michael repeated the plea with increasing panic. He didn't know what to feel more mortified at – that the mastermind he had only ever seen calm and collected was for all intents and purposes suffering a nervous breakdown, or that he was broken enough to allow the man he hated to witness it.

Dropping a few decibels, he hissed, "Listen. Just listen, Michael. I know you'd probably rather kill me, and I'd prefer that to this, but you need to tell me what they did to you."

Michael's rapid breaths levelled out. Wiping his face, he shook his head at Mahone, comprehending who he was. It took him another moment to speak.

"They murdered her."

"I know," replied Mahone, deflating. "I saw her body, too."

"Not her!" Michael snapped, a darkness Mahone had never seen before taking over the hazel in his eyes. "Not just her. They grabbed someone else. Living off the street. A girl. Younger than LJ. And they – when she … oh God, Alex. They put a gun to her temple … pulled the trigger right in front of me. All of it –"

Mahone was stoic as Michael's hands began to shake. The younger man didn't need to say more for the blanks to be filled in, but he did, whimpering into his shirt sleeve.

"It's all my fault."

Unable and unwilling to offer any words of appeasement, Mahone merely sighed as Michael returned his head to his knees. A few minutes of taciturn dread passed.

At last, the projector blared to life, spilling light onto the screen hanging before them. The machete-wielding man walked away without uttering a word. Mahone turned to watch him go. He grimaced as he heard the click of the church door's lock.

The screen ran bare for an eternity. It was only when Michael raised his head, swollen eyes narrowed, that Mahone got to his feet and checked the projector. Just when his fingers touched the ancient device, lettering appeared across the screen.

_Confidential: level 5 clearance and above only. Authorised access for outside personnel only. #940F: ALM and MTS._

Mahone shared a look with Michael as the message faded, both of them unable to change that their fates were about to be determined together. Sitting again and giving his attention back to the screen, Mahone swallowed hard as a handsome face framed by a blank wall came into view.

It was the same one that had plagued his dreams for as long as he could remember.

"Hi, Alex," the man said, brushing hair out of his face with a small grin. "Can I just say first – thanks for handing me the promotion. I can only hope to take that as your first step towards forgiving me for eliminating Pamela."

Heat rising in his face, Mahone didn't blink as he saw Michael glance at him from the corner of his eye. The man on the screen cleared his throat.

"But of course – Michael. You don't know who I am, and I doubt Alex has been sharing bedtime stories about me. My name is Ryan Kingswood. And for the last two months, I've been in charge of systematically destroying your life and Alex's to the point where you both have no choice but to help me."

Michael's mouth parted slightly as the smile on the edges of Ryan's own faded.

"Introductions aside. Before either of you decide that I'm beyond trusting – well, I guess I'm not in the best position for you to hear me out. That's okay. That makes sense. Especially since neither of you have anybody to trust. Not anymore."

The camera panned out, shrinking Ryan onto one side of the screen. Another figure seated next to him came into focus.

Mahone felt the hatred simmering at his core give way to raw horror as he recognised the individual. Though he had every reason to be, the man appeared no more under duress than Ryan did. The clean-cut suit he had been attired with the last time Mahone had seen him was unmistakeable.

"There's a reason I've kept things from both of you," murmured Jack, face devoid of emotion. "The plan. Sona Penitentiary. This is where things have been heading – one was part of the other all along. Alex … Michael … you wanted to know what Sona and the plan were. Now you're right in the middle of both."


	4. The Beech Tree

_Chapter 4: The Beech Tree_

* * *

If Mahone had never experienced as much treachery as he had from those he trusted the most, he would have felt at least a semblance of shock at Jack's reveal. Unfortunately, betrayal had been the only reliable thing he'd known for a long time.

It was left to Michael to gape at the flickering screen. Mahone noticed his jaw tensing with every word Jack uttered.

"I had no choice but to mislead you concerning the reason you were placed together as cellmates. Make no mistake – my agenda in that context was to protect you from the Company. But outside of it, my interests were in line with theirs."

"We couldn't afford to keep you both alive," Ryan continued, voice blunt. "Fortunately, Jack has more experience than most with that when it comes to the government. He stepped in to help. But he couldn't fake two high-profile deaths for us. So he contacted me through a mutual acquaintance, and we struck up a better deal. He got us exactly what we needed and exactly what we couldn't in order for you to pay attention."

Mahone's throat went dry even before the screen went dark. Seconds later, a tidy and sparsely furnished entrance hall came into view. The front door leading into it opened, and a shock of auburn hair backed inside. Flailing arms and loud shrieks followed.

It took Mahone a moment to realise that Sara was tickling Cameron.

"No way you get to see!" his son squealed, face going red with the effort of clutching onto a scrunched-up piece of paper. "It's rotten. Awful, stinking, rotten."

"Your teacher didn't say that. She said it's really good, and I just want a peek. Please? Just a tiny peek."

"Or what?"

"Or –" Sara dropped her bag and resumed tickling with both hands, eliciting more giggles "– I'll keep this up until you catch a cootie!"

"Dad told me there's no such thing as cooties!"

"Show me your painting and I'll take you to see him right now."

Cameron stopped wriggling in Sara's arms, eyes huge. "Really?"

"Nope," she replied, plucking the paper out of Cameron's hands. "Still next week, sucker!"

Blinking in bewilderment as Sara ran off, Cameron quickly gave pursuit, wailing a battle cry. Mahone was torn between laughing as he heard the chase continue off-screen, and screaming at the circumstances under which the entire scene had been recorded.

He didn't need to listen when Ryan and Jack reappeared.

"Before he visited Elderach today, Jack was ingenious enough to lay out some surveillance at Tancredi's home. He also told me about your noble little sacrifice, Michael – but we all know you'd still die for her. And for your family. Just like Alex would. Just like you won't, because we need you for something far more important."

"There's a man inside Sona with intelligence which is vital to Company operations," said Jack. "He went off the grid a year ago. When he turned up in Panama, he ended up in prison before he could hand over what he had. There have been two efforts to extract him. Two failures."

Ryan was smiling again. "This guy thwarted both of our retrieval attempts. As far as we know, he killed the agents we sent in. He wants to stay in that hellhole. We need – well, we'd prefer it if you changed his mind. And then we need you to get him out of there. Alive, goes without saying."

"If you haven't already learned to tolerate each other by now, it's time to start. You will have to co-operate to pull this off. You both have a connection to the target that makes you valuable assets and therefore keeps you alive – but if either of you raise any red flags, the people that matter to you the most will be pulled out of witness protection."

"That's a fill-in-the-blanks statement," Ryan went on. "But I want to make this very clear. If just one of you tries anything stupid, authorities in Detroit will receive a distress call to a house on Harsant Avenue. After her prints are found all over the murder weapon, Sara Tancredi will be handed a life sentence for killing a defenceless five-year-old-boy. But so long as you keep a low profile and do what you're told, that remains a mere possibility."

Removing his eyes from the camera and flicking them at his companion, Jack said, "An agent will contact you both within the next 48 hours with more information."

The screen went blank.

Metal scratched against metal as the tape ran out. The poison in the air seemed to translate to Mahone's stab wound. He massaged the ache in his leg, running his other hand over his face.

"After everything he's done for you," he mimicked at last.

Ripping his gaze away from the screen, Michael twisted sideways, frowning.

"This is my fault, of course."

"I don't know, Michael. Let's see. Let's see – whose endgame was Panama? Who researched it for months, who took Spanish lessons for months … who flew here, twice, before he got himself thrown into Fox River? You have Panama written all over you in goddamn ink –"

"My only contacts here are two people, who own a shop, who built a boat for me. Unless your friend's looking for a good quote, I had nothing to do with this."

"Really."

"There has to be an explanation for this," Michael sidetracked, unfurling from his hunched position. "If Jack wants it to look like he's turned his back on his country and sided with them, there has to be a good reason behind it."

Lifting himself from the bench, Mahone made his way to the room's exit, replying, "You just gave it."

"Meaning what?"

Mahone could feel his cellmate on his heels as he arrived at the door and grappled with the knob. Finding that it was still locked, he lowered his head.

"The government abandoned Jack first," he said quietly. "He had two years to stew over that in China. When he got out, he was told that the only reason he was needed was because they wanted him back at the job that ruined his life. Couple that with a less-than-stellar psychological profile, and you have yourself a traitor."

"Jack is a patriot," rebutted Michael, standing his ground as Mahone faced him, "not a traitor."

"Oh, please. You don't know him. _I_ don't know him. But if you're not convinced, let me remind you – and I think this is important – that we just watched him threaten our families. That's real patriotic how he abused his position in order to manipulate us."

Michael rolled his eyes as Mahone pushed past him. Watching Mahone lie down on a bench, he took a deep breath.

"Is it that hard for you to admit that what I'm saying is the truth?"

"Depends on what makes you so sure."

"He told me about Ryan Kingswood." Mahone continued to stare at the ceiling, but his discomfort must have shown. "That's right, Alex. I know he was the one who turned Jack over to the Chinese. Why would Jack let him introduce himself to me as if I didn't already know him? Why would he work with the man who betrayed him? You can answer that, at least."

"Don't interrogate me, Michael. I'm tired enough as it is."

"Were you even going to tell me that you knew all that?" Michael persisted. "Or is it just easier to believe that he'd double-cross you like Ryan did?"

"I think you need to re-evaluate your ability to rally the troops."

"And what – sleep this off? Are you serious? They murdered an innocent girl to get me in here. We need to figure out why … we need to figure out what Jack's doing. If this goes wrong, Lincoln and LJ will be exposed. If this doesn't work, Sara will spend the rest of her life in prison!"

In one forward leap, Mahone had his cellmate pinned against the wall by his throat. He raised a finger between Michael's eyes.

"Save your lectures. Maybe now you can get through your head what you've put me through. How many lives you've ruined, not counting the people you actually give a damn about. And for what? Your brother?"

Hate saturated Michael's expression as he was released. "You would've done the same."

"No. I would have done it better."

Mahone returned to the bench and stretched back out over it. When the silence began to unnerve him, he glanced over at Michael, only to see the younger man observing his leg. Too late, he realised he was scratching at his prickling wound. He pulled his hand away.

"You're not going to work with me, are you?" Michael surmised.

Closing his eyes, Mahone answered with a scowl and a twitch of his cheek. Michael let out a noise halfway between a scoff and a sneer.

"You don't have a chance of saving Cameron on your own."

Mahone swallowed as he heard Michael shift away and settle himself in another corner of the room.

"But I do. Just know this, right now, Alex. If anyone else dies because you can't get over a grudge … you'll be worse off than just being on your own in here."

And for the second time since they'd met, Mahone was hard pressed to sleep with the knowledge that Michael had made a promise he would follow through with.

* * *

_Four months ago – Baudette, Minnesota_

* * *

Ritual had never been a big part of Mahone's life, bar work, and death.

Even then, he reserved graveside visits for only a select few of those who had passed through his life. He laid flowers at his mother's headstone every Thursday after the anniversary of her death, always careful to avoid any awkward meetings with his brother. He paid his respects to Trevor Beck in much the same way.

And then there was the murderer of his last FBI partner, who – as Mahone mused while walking towards a sprawling beech tree situated in a corner of the cemetery he was in – had hardly enjoyed the grand military burial his current object of tribute had received.

The thought quirked the corners of his mouth into the first smile he'd worn in weeks.

"Hey," he said, arriving at the marble tablet and digging his hands into his coat pockets to preserve some warmth. "This is probably the sanest thing I've done all month."

Ryan had been a man of simplicity the same way Mahone was a man of protocol. Therefore, each visit to him in the last decade had been more for Mahone's catharsis rather than the laying of any decorative wreaths. Standing back up, he became aware of how empty the area was.

No relatives had attended Ryan's funeral. In fact, not one person who could attest to being close to the man had been there, save for Mahone himself. It saddened him to the point where he wondered whether the sum total of his life would be the same – decorated career-wise, but ultimately forgotten.

"You always said Pam was never good enough for me," he continued, face turning downcast. "But I was never good enough for her."

He was soon disclosing everything that had happened over the last year – his divorce from Pam, his abandonment of both her and Cameron, Shales, the resulting investigation, and the eventual leeway he'd been granted over Sullins due to, as he had feared, the Company's interference.

The spectre of his former employers having something over him had been the last thing keeping him from burying Shales. The first thing he'd done once he had given in was fly to Ryan's graveside. Even then, the only thing he'd managed to do was break down into a crying mess, questioning how he could have screwed up so completely, and praying to God that he could go back ten years and be the one to have died.

Since that night, he'd only managed to land himself in bigger strife. Abruzzi and Apolskis had been added below Shales on his list. And Scofield knew about all three.

Michael.

Ever since the fugitive had racketed up the nerve to call him on Pam's cell phone, the noose had tightened. It wasn't until Mahone had finished excavating his backyard, incriminating soil and all, that he had contemplated that Michael's threat had made him lose his mind.

In the aftermath – despite Kim's assurances that he could cover up any evidence Michael might produce – Mahone had fled the state without advance notice.

He knew he couldn't hide forever. Still, he needed to ease his burden. That he could only do so with a dead man might have been cause to resist the pen in his jacket pocket. He grasped for it anyway, popping two pills into his mouth.

Exhaling as the midazolam hit his system, he ran a hand over Ryan's headstone and pushed the manhunt from his mind.

It was a while before he left. Tucking the pen away, he dragged himself back to his car. Instead of driving off to the right and re-entering the highway, he headed in the opposite direction, parking on a bare hilltop a short distance away.

He popped the trunk. In a matter of minutes, he had retrieved a shovel and two plastic bags. Shedding his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he scoped the surrounding area, before picking up the shovel and attacking the dirt ground.

Hours passed until he had produced a pit of satisfactory depth. Wasting no breath, he dropped the bags into it. By the time he filled the pit in again and stamped out any sign of its existence, the sun was high in the air and the sweat on his back was sticking.

After cleaning himself up, he didn't linger. Focusing on what lay ahead in New Mexico, he threw only a cursory glance at Ryan's resting place as he drove past, unwilling to entertain the thought that he might never return to see it.

And then he braked.

Wiping the sweat from his eyes for a moment, he peered into his rearview mirror. What he'd mistaken for a man standing at Ryan's graveside was in fact a man standing to its right, back turned to the road and hands resting against the beech tree hanging overhead.

Mahone climbed out of his car. Still staring at the stranger in the distance, he realised he had never seen another soul in the cemetery in all of his visits to it. The possibility that the man might be there for Ryan peaked his curiosity.

He didn't approach, however, until the man dropped a water bottle into the knapsack at his feet and, in the same motion, pulled out a pickaxe.

Breaking into a jog as the pickaxe sliced into an already sizeable dent in the beech tree, he called out, "Hey!"

The effect of his greeting was the reaction of a caged animal. Mahone halted a few feet away, hands darting outwards in a gesture of peace, as the man spun around, pickaxe raised.

What struck Mahone first was the anger – bitterness and anger rolled into one etched deep into the man's dark eyes and thin face. Stripping away the ten different layers of grime adorning his skin, the stranger would have been good-looking in another life. The facial hair which swallowed his features made him appear a decade older than he seemed.

At last, the stranger lowered the pickaxe. Mahone followed suit with his hands. They both remained as tense as the other.

"What the hell are you doing here?" the man asked, and for good reason, considering the cemetery's usual deserted status.

Mahone nodded at Ryan's headstone, saying at the same time, "I could ask you the same thing."

The man did a poor job of keeping Mahone's attention away from the hole he had made in the beech tree, waving his pickaxe where Mahone had indicated.

"You know him?"

"I –" Mahone coughed, catching himself "– knew him, actually. And I don't take lightly anyone desecrating his home town's burial ground."

Narrowing his eyes into a squint, the man weighed Mahone up against something inscrutable. He relaxed after a few seconds. Dropping the pickaxe, he fished out his water bottle from his bag again and took a long gulp.

"It's council work. I don't mean any offence to your friend."

"Council work," echoed Mahone. "On a tree out in the middle of nowhere; on flora that isn't bothering anyone."

"Yeah," the man snapped.

"That's a lot of trouble to send you all the way up from Illinois." The stranger stiffened, and Mahone pointed to a red and blue logo on the man's sweatshirt. "My ex-wife. She's a Cubs fan, too."

It was the wrong thing to joke about. Hostility further enveloped the man, and he showed it by abruptly hoisting his bag up from the ground. Mahone opened his mouth to say more, but stopped when he caught a metallic flash.

The slight of hand had almost bypassed him. It was only when the stranger zipped his knapsack closed that Mahone replayed the small box slipping out from his shirt sleeve. Eyeing the bag, Mahone considered demanding a look inside.

But he was too tired to transfer the paranoia of his FBI work to his one moment of peace.

"Your ex-wife," said the man, running a hand over his beard as he neared Mahone. "She from Chicago?"

"Born and raised."

"Oh. Right. Well, see, here's the thing. That was none of my business. And next time, you should try minding your own."

Mahone's eyebrows lifted into the air as the man walked off. Pivoting away from Ryan's headstone himself, he couldn't help but wonder if his presence served as a conduit for the inner asshole within people, or whether they were just naturally drawn to him.

"If you still think there's a chance, Alex … you should let her know what your problem is. While you still have her."

The other man was right behind him. Mahone didn't startle. Staring down their height difference, he didn't blink either until he comprehended the man's statement.

Speaking against his better judgement, he replied, "We separated on equal terms. The problem wasn't just mine."

A smirk teased the edges of the man's lips even as a pained look crossed his brown eyes. Tightening his jaw, he took a few steps back.

"While you still have her," he repeated, retreating towards the road before finally turning around. "Talk to her."

It didn't occur to Mahone until much later – sitting alone in a makeshift cage staring at his pistol – that the stranger had told the truth by using his name.

* * *

The first thought Mahone had when he woke up was that someone had taken to his leg with a sandblaster.

Biting his lip as he sat up, he winced as his back signalled its disapproval of the hard bed he had subjected it to. His fingers trembled slightly as he rolled his left trouser leg up and inspected his bandages. Hissing as he pressed down, he detected what looked to be a mixture of stale blood and pus.

"Your girlfriend didn't happen to pass along some medical expertise while you were with her, did she?" he asked, glancing around the church room. "Hey. Michael. Rise and shine."

Michael was gone. Though Mahone hadn't expected him to hang around given an opportunity to leave, he still grimaced as he struggled off the bench. It took some adjustment until the pain in his leg reduced to a tolerable level and he was able to walk.

He was about to venture outside when he spotted a stool positioned next to the room's door. On top was a water bottle filled three-quarters of the way. It was then that the lengthy time frame since Mahone's last meal and drink became clear. He pounced on the water bottle, preparing to down the whole thing.

As he unscrewed the cap, however, he caught sight of a line of pebbles and sticks also set out on the stool. Taking a closer look, he recognised the arrangement as a series of dots and dashes.

… **.– …– . .. –**

"Bastard," he muttered.

Tilting his head back, he took a few sips from the bottle before reluctantly closing it again. The water had an unpleasant tang to it, but it did the trick. Stowing the bottle inside the jacket he'd woken up in Panama wearing, he moved out into the corridor.

It was empty. Unsettled by his lack of company, he drifted further down the hallway. Following the torturous smell of food wafting through the air, he studied his surroundings. The light of day made the dank walls and grubby cell doors no less foreboding to his eyes.

He soon reached signs of civilization. Rounding the corner, he arrived at the edges of an enormous atrium. Prisoners were everywhere, going about their business in a way that stunned Mahone. If he hadn't known better, he would have guessed that he had landed in the middle of a dormitory common room.

Despite the relative order of the place, he kept his head down as he passed through. A few heads turned his way and Spanish words that sounded less than genial were thrown at him. Nevertheless, he made it through unscathed.

Sitting in a corner playing cards with two tree-trunk muscled inmates was the machete-wielding man from the night before. The man paid Mahone no heed. While Mahone was desperate for answers concerning the Company's target, he sensed from the cigars being puffed away at by the group that the man had merely played intermediary.

The doorway Mahone slunk through at the other end of the atrium led out into a courtyard. It was even more packed than inside. Leaning against a clay column, he stared longingly at a nearby table covered with fruit and slabs of meat.

Kneading his growling stomach, his leg stinging once more, Mahone took a moment to notice that he was attracting stares himself.

He spun. Standing with a finger outstretched at him was a gaunt-figured boy, yelling in Spanish. Before he could react, a volcano-sized inmate wearing an equally temperamental expression stepped in front of him. Mahone raised his head to meet the man's gaze as the boy ran off.

"Where you put it?" the giant asked, stabbing Mahone's chest with a beefy hand. "I rip out a tooth every minute until you tell me!"

Mahone backed up, well aware that even without his current injury he would be in for a world of hurt if he took on his antagonist.

"You've got the wrong guy, pal."

The man's fist exploded into Mahone's cheekbone with the force of a slingshot-driven boulder. Stumbling backwards, Mahone felt his left leg buckle underneath him, and he fell. Utilising his element of surprise, the giant kicked him around the head.

"You Americans all the same!" Finding the wound in Mahone's leg, the giant crushed his boot into it. "You in my room before! You take my pills!"

Curling into a ball, Mahone tried to find an opening in which to defend himself. The assault was unrelenting, however. He had almost given up, ready to pass out to the pain, when a roar followed by a thudding noise erupted above him.

The next second, Mahone's assailant had been pulled off him. Unshielding his face, Mahone saw the giant being pounded by a metal pipe wielded by a shirtless figure. He caught a glimpse of his rescuer as the man dodged a grab by the giant. His mouth fell open.

"Brad?" he shouted over the jeers of the prisoners who had gathered around them. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Tossing the pipe aside and tugging the unconscious giant's shirt over his head, Bellick replied, "Saving your ass. Get out of here!"

Before Mahone could further withdraw into disbelief, he saw another inmate reaching for the discarded pipe. He ensnared the inmate's hand as it closed around the weapon, and in one twist snapped three of his fingers out of their sockets.

Bellick swivelled around as the inmate dropped to his knees, screaming. The crowd surged inwards, and retreating along with Bellick, Mahone sliced the pipe at them in warning.

"Anyone else who wants a turn gets this through their neck," he exclaimed, blinking blood from a cut on his brow out of his eyes. "This is over!"

A booming voice cut off the crowd's response. Not daring to turn his back to them, Mahone waited until the Spanish-barking speaker had passed in front before he glanced at him. He hadn't even pinpointed the man when the machete in his hand thudded into the giant's throat.

The giant's eyes flew open. Gargling as the machete-wielding man dug the blade deeper into his windpipe, he just as quickly went still.

The crowd died. More than a few onlookers, Bellick included, looked on the verge of retching as the machete-wielding man plucked his weapon out. Mahone had seen worse on the battlefield. He was still ill at ease as the machete-wielding man faced him.

"I will explain to everybody that this is not to happen again," the man said, cleaning his machete with a cloth. "Leave now."

Mahone wasn't about to argue. The crowd parted, and he followed Bellick out of the circle and across the courtyard. He picked up a few dishes from the food table on the way, drawing no protest. The machete-wielding man began to admonish the crowd as he and Bellick vanished indoors.

"Man, that was messed up," Bellick groused, pulling his purloined shirt on. "But, hey – I guess we're even now after you getting me out of the slammer."

Remaining silent, Mahone peered around the corridor they had entered. He forced the food into Bellick's arms with an abrupt shove.

"You're welcome," the former CO said as Mahone stalked off. "Damn, I'm starved –"

Mahone rounded on him, a finger pressed to his lips. Bellick broke off. A few seconds and steps later, Mahone dove into a gap in the wall. A frightened squeak emerged along with the gaunt-figured boy who had pointed him out earlier.

"Hola, rat," Mahone greeted, slamming the boy against the wall. "What are you up to?"

Coming up behind them, Bellick swore. Mahone turned to him.

"You know this kid?"

"Damn right I do." Bellick paused to chew down on a piece of bread. "Pipsqueak had me beaten up and walking around in my netherwear my first day here."

"Please, senors, I do only what I am told," the boy begged. "I mean no harm!"

"Oh, I think a lesson in real harm is in order, muchacha –"

Mahone stopped an attack on the panicking boy by blocking access to him with the pipe. Bellick glared, but heeded the message and backed down.

"Did someone tell you to set the other prisoners on us?" Mahone asked, returning his gaze to the boy. "Did he tell you to look out for Americans in particular?"

"Si, senor. He say he is in danger. That bad men are after him and that he need my help. He different to everyone else. He give me food. I help him so he help me, that is all –"

"Where can I find him?" interrupted Mahone, face hardening.

"He come to me, not other way."

"My momma could use that answer on her backyard lawn for the next year."

"Brad, shut up. Kid – you better start telling me the truth. What's the name of the guy who's pulling your strings, and how long has he been here?"

The boy's eyes darted around the corridor. "You let me go if I say?"

"Yes."

Mahone released his grip on the boy's shoulders to further reassure him. Rubbing his arm, the boy cast a wary look at Bellick before speaking.

"He not tell me his name. But he about age of you, senor. Live here short time … short months. Hiding everywhere. He talk good espanol. But I am able to tell he have voice like yours."

The words stuck. Drawing eye level with the boy, Mahone deduced, "His accent's American."

"Si. I am sure."

The resulting silence didn't last long. Noting from Mahone's stare into space that he had said enough, the boy scampered off. Mahone downed some more water from the bottle in his jacket as he tried to wrap the clues in his head into something logical.

"Should've let me had a crack at him," said Bellick, slumping onto the wall and proffering a bowl of rice. "Little turd."

Mahone ignored the food, his appetite lost. "Is there something you want, Brad?"

"Whoa now, brainiac. Situation ain't exactly good when some lowlife's gunning for our heads on a plate. Least we can do is watch each other's back."

"Don't you get it?" Mahone snapped. "You're not out of harm's way. We're not the first foreigners he's taken down. He knows that I was … that we – it's not going to end here."

Bellick shrugged. "Well, okay. Two of us, one of him. Let's track him down and kick his crap out until he's the one who wants to be left alone."

"It's not that simple." At Bellick's blank expression, Mahone ran a hand through his hair. "We need to find Michael."

"Tattoo wonder boy's in this stink pit as well?"

"He won't be for long if someone else reaches him first." Mahone gestured at Bellick to follow him back into the courtyard. "We need to get to him, now."


	5. Flank Two

_Chapter 5: Flank Two_

* * *

"For God's sake, Ryan. We do that, then what exactly was the point of bringing him down to Panama? He has information. We still need him."

"I think the better question is why we even need you."

The room was silent for a moment. Jack could sense a ripple of assent at the statement, though, and he kept his eyes clouded as he turned his attention to the copper-haired man.

"I'm sorry. You might have only just caught up on the situation on the flight down here, but you need to ask yourself who, out of all of us, was responsible for connecting Mahone and Scofield to Sona, let alone procuring the resources to get them in there, and co-operating with us."

"If you had stopped Paul Kellerman from testifying in the courts instead of stopping us from eliminating President Heller, we wouldn't require a back-door extraction in the first place."

"You really think you can boil it down to that?"

"I think you take us all for idiots."

"I do think you're impairing everyone's mental functioning by wasting time we don't have."

"Jack's right," Ryan cut in, turning away from an observation window framing a large section of the wall. "His credentials don't pass any loyalty tests, but he's followed through so far. Right now, he's our best chance at keeping our Sona boys in check."

Fumes enveloped the second-in-command's expression as Ryan clamped a hand on Jack's shoulder and spun him towards the observation window.

"Of course, there's still the issue of your unwitting wingman here."

Jack followed Ryan's nod through the glass surface. Seated alone inside, face stoic apart from the occasional eye movement, was Beltrov. Sweat was trickling down the warden's face, impeded only by a berry-coloured contusion on his temple.

"It's what I've been saying. He used to be an inmate at Elderach State Penitentiary."

"Except I'm not seeing why his being the former cellmate of anyone, in any way, should blot the ink on his autopsy report."

"Leave it to me," insisted Jack. "Trust me. Five minutes, and we'll be done with him."

Ryan traced his lower lip with a knuckle, keeping his eyes unreadable with disquieting ease. Finally, he gave another nod.

Jack had a brief, questioning thought as to how a man as open with his emotions as Mahone was could ever have befriended the cold figure before him. Relegating it to the space at the back of his head already crowded with remorse, he lifted a folder from the desk behind them and entered the room.

"You bastard," Beltrov spat the moment their eyes met.

"I can assure you, Jonathon, that I don't want to see you dead. Try and make this easier for yourself."

"Friends of mine are dead because of you. Who knows how many? Just add me to the list now, because there is no chance I'm co-operating with … whatever this is."

Advancing to where Beltrov was restrained, Jack halted an arm's length away. He considered the warden's words with a strained smile.

"August 2002," he said at last, circling behind Beltrov at the same time. "Three years ago. You received a new cellmate. You had him for two months. I want you to tell me something very crucial about him."

"I had a lot of cellmates back then. But if I did remember anything, I still wouldn't –"

Beltrov made an abrupt noise like a bird having its wings shredded apart as Jack swooped, latching onto the nape of his neck. He dug his thumb down onto a fragile bundle of nerves near Beltrov's collarbone until the warden's grunts grew audible enough to satisfy their audience.

"Listen to me," Jack said, maintaining a blank countenance in contrast to Beltrov's pained one. "Three minutes from now, you're going to be dragged outside, and you're going to get a bullet to the back of the head. You don't have time to ask if this is a trick, do you understand?"

Another scream flew from Beltrov's mouth as Jack hit another nerve cluster.

"Nobody else at Elderach was killed after we left. I want to make sure you can go back to them after this, but the people outside won't consider anything I have to say unless it begins with information you give me right now."

"How can I tell anyone what I know about this guy if you won't tell me who he is!"

Jack flipped ajar the folder in his hands, drawing Beltrov's gaze back from the observation window where they could see Ryan and the copper-haired man regarding them with grim expressions.

The warden blinked his recognition as Jack raised a photograph.

"According to official records, up until October 2002 when he was released, your cellmate received four pieces of mail through a foreign, highly specialised delivery service. The stamps would have been distinct. The packaging would have been close to this colour."

The maroon hue of the folder in Jack's hands sparked a supplemental reaction from Beltrov. "So what?"

"So can you tell me anything about what was in them? Anything that you remember, anything at all?"

Beltrov took a breath heaped with disdain. Leaning down until he was ear level with the man, Jack pressured in more urgent tones.

"I swear to you, Jonathon, that you'll live through this if you talk."

"The guy didn't –" Beltrov slowed his blurted words "– I never saw what was in those packages. But I remember, after he got his last one … he asked me to get a message from this visitor. This woman … and she asked me to memorise it because she couldn't put it down on paper. I did. I passed it on. That's the closest I got to knowing anything about the guy before he left."

"What was the message?"

"My only leverage, apparently."

"I don't even know if what you're saying holds any significance. Tell me the message and I can use it as leverage for your life."

Beltrov glanced at the observation window again. After a few moments, he murmured something so quietly that Jack had to lip-read it.

"12199504, Minnesota?" he repeated.

"Neither of them told me what it means."

Tucking the photo back into his folder, Jack straightened up. For a fleeting minute, he perused the rest of his papers, seeing nothing. Then, swallowing, he uttered a thank you and left the room.

He could feel Beltrov's eyes following him as he arrived on the other side of the observation window.

"Does he have anything useful?" Ryan inquired, emotionless.

Jack shook his head.

Without being prompted, the copper-haired man opened the door to the other room, coordinating his movement by pulling out a silencer. Before Beltrov could comprehend what was happening, three bullets pierced his chest and skull.

"Shame you went to the trouble of placing Alex and Michael in Elderach for it to come to this," said Ryan, smiling. "But it was a good example of covering all scenarios, anyway."

Jack detached himself from the sight of another agent preparing a tarpaulin and a double-bladed hacksaw.

"Is my transportation outside?" he asked.

Ryan answered by producing a set of keys. "The silver hatchback."

Making to leave, Jack kept as subtle as possible his unwillingness to look into the other room. Ryan called his name at the last second, however, and he stopped.

"If you're caught while you're out there and taken into custody, you'll be eliminated. Regardless of your word that you can keep quiet."

A spurt of anger somehow translated onto Jack's face as a mirror of the other man's tight grin. Giving a curt incline of his head, he turned away from the catalyst of the living hell that was his life, the ease that he was able to do so since the ex-president who had preceded Ryan in that category tearing him a little further.

* * *

Jack spent the majority of his drive going over the numbers in his head. He substituted them with letters, rearranged them and matched them up with everything he knew about Minnesota, until the oppressive Panamanian heat forced him to conclude that they made up nothing more than a rearranged calendar date.

He had only just broached what needed to be said to Mahone and Michael, and how it had to be said, when he arrived at Sona.

"No, Mr. Burne," the official at the visitor outpost droned when Jack relayed who he needed to see. "You are only allowed to speak with one prisoner per day. One or the other, not both."

Though Jack had expected as much, he still frowned as he weighed up his options.

Mahone would get the point as soon as he laid eyes on Jack. But Jack had seen up close how impaired the former agent's functioning could become when his thoughts were disturbed by his urges for vengeance.

"Scofield," he muttered. "I'll see Michael Scofield."

The engineer's name was barked through a microphone. After a short interim during which Jack was instructed on what to do upon entering the Sona grounds, he was allowed past the book-in area and through the main barrier.

Striding towards a caged area rimmed with rusty metal bars, he wondered at the reasoning behind keeping up a veneer of etiquette. He had been in war zones that gave off a less anarchic vibe than the one that pulsed through this particular territory, and he had no doubt that the world inside Sona's walls fell far short of a better picture.

Ten minutes elapsed before Jack began to worry that Michael hadn't even survived his first night. Another five came and went, until finally the door at the other end of the caged area opened, and the younger man stepped through.

A reflex seemed to take hold of Michael's eyes as he approached the chain link barrier, narrowing them into twin slits of frigidity.

"Morning," Jack said.

Stopping inches from the fence, Michael cast a wary look around them both. He removed a hand from the pocket of his hooded top, wiping it over bleary eyes.

"Have Lincoln and Sara –" he began hesitantly "– Have they been told I'm out here?"

Jack didn't have the patience to mince words in reply to Michael's venom-laced question.

"No. Your status is currently missing, presumed dead. And it's better if we continue to contain the situation in those terms."

"I want a call to make sure my family's okay."

"You know we can't afford that, Michael."

"We."

Letting the echoed word fall between them, Michael drilled his toe into the red sand powdering the ground. Jack had seen enough expressions of malcontent to be able to recognise the shadow of that same desire to cause harm. He mentally lowered his calculations as to how easy it would be to handle the younger man.

"I'm not going to sermonise," Michael went on. "I'm not going to pretend I have any upper hand in this. Or try and negotiate the lives of the people I care about. I'll do whatever you want. I'll take care of anything you want, as long as you stay away from them."

Michael paused. His eyes were hollow with a practiced unflappability, both belying a deep-seated desperation as he levelled them at Jack.

"Tell me who the Company wants."

It took Jack a moment to get over his internal curiosity about how much of a monster he had become that Michael hadn't even thought to question whether another agenda was tempering his actions.

"For the sake of security," he said, grappling with the bag hanging from his shoulder, "it's better if you don't go asking for him through Sona by name. But I have files on him. Information you should become familiar with. He's already proven himself hostile to any rescue attempts, but I know him. He can be reasoned with –"

"Jack," interrupted Michael, face tightening, "I don't care. About what he's done or why you want him out. All I need is a person. I can do the rest from there."

Allowing his bag to drop back to his side, Jack struggled with the urgency that had kicked off his entire crusade. He thickened the shield of calm around himself.

"Fine."

Tearing out a pen and a scrap piece from one of the many papers in his bag, Jack scratched the number Beltrov had given him onto it. Taking the time to absorb that the suspicion etched into Michael's body language was only growing, Jack began to rue the fact that the younger man was as terrible at reading people as Mahone was at keeping his head straight.

At last, hiding the action from the guards stationed in Sona's watchtower with his body, he poked his note through the fence. Just as Michael finished massacring any trust that remained between them with the set of his jaw by grasping for the note, the entrance to the caged area burst open.

The note fluttered to the ground as Michael spun.

"Christ, Michael."

Peering past him, Jack's stomach dropped along with it.

"What do you think you're doing out here? Are you trying to make yourself an open target?"

Mahone's eyes were so intent on Michael that it took him a few extra metres inside the caged area to recognise Jack. The dried blood which caked his forehead split apart as his eyebrows lifted. Jack had never seen such well-founded disbelief progress so quickly to rage.

Fortunately, a rifle shot from the watchtower and the blare of a microphone cut off Mahone's next words. Michael jumped backwards, flicking his protuberant gaze between Mahone and Jack as his hands raised into the air.

Translating over the hostile stream of Spanish, Jack explained, "I'm only allowed one visitor at a time."

"I know. Alex, you have to leave."

Mahone hadn't reacted at all to the bullet pinging inches away from his feet into the sand. Spotting the piece of paper lying next to Michael's feet, he stripped the situation down and deciphered it in seconds.

His head jerked towards the door behind him.

"You're the one who's done here."

Stepping closer to his counterpart, Michael protested in a hurried rasp. Anger viable enough to make Mahone contort his face in such a way that it clearly stung his bruises and cuts swelled. Jack had a distant thought that the hatred he had witnessed between the pair the last time they had all been together had reached unconditional proportions.

The deadlier of the two finally shoved the other at the exit, yelling about the origin of his freshest injuries. Embarrassment flushed Michael's features as he surrendered. Casting at Jack a look teeming with equal parts resentment and apology, he disappeared through the exit and shut the door.

Mahone transferred the full extent of his fury back to Jack.

Watching Mahone reach the fence and stoop to pick up the paper scrap Michael had left behind, Jack found the various excuses and reassurances he had made up for his current scenario vanishing into the sinkhole of his own guilt. He tried and failed to focus on an area of his partner's face that wasn't purple or swollen.

"Weren't even going to write?" Mahone asked, an iciness made for breaking weaker men edging his voice as he read the note. "Better things to do in Panama?"

"Alex, that information –"

Jack trailed into nothingness as Mahone tore up the paper, interspersing each shred with an increasingly rushed flow of harangue.

"First the Company held the fact … that I killed a con over my head so I'd take out eight more, and now … I'm going to die in here because of drug trafficking charges. I just … how does that work, Jack? Has the Company added neon-arrowed irony as a prerequisite for destroying people's lives since I left it?"

"That wasn't my intent."

"I stopped caring about your intent when you took up arms with the man who killed my wife. And threatened my son. And the liberty of a woman whose life's already one step below the toilet that passes for mine these days."

Rubbing his throat to stem any impatience that might creep into his voice, Jack replied, "You think it makes sense that Ryan would work with me, even if you think that I'd work with him? He doesn't know that I know who had me abducted and taken to China. For all I know, he does, and he's planning to kill me when this is all over."

Mahone let out a laugh strangled with exasperation and despair.

"I've been in here less than 24 hours and your pin-tail donkey has already tried to have me killed. Step off the pity wagon for a minute, cut out the nursery rhyme code, and tell me what was going through your head to make you do this."

Jack started. "You understand the message?"

He instantly regretted his question as Mahone tilted his head, the knowledge that he had a new bargaining chip writing itself into a wry smile.

"Answer me first."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, Jack coughed and brought out the maroon folder from his bag. He held it out before Mahone, who skimmed its contents with unblinking eyes.

"Give me the photo," the former agent ordered quietly.

Jack did so, scrolling up the sheet and passing it through the fence. Mahone pocketed it. He sniffed down his nose at Jack with renewed contempt.

"Nothing in that folder tells me why the Company wants your guy out badly enough to risk using me and Michael as disposable pawns. Or why your guy's so desperate to stay out of their hands that he's willing to commit murder."

"All I can tell you is that it involves national security. The finer details don't concern you. They shouldn't right now."

"Everything concerns me!" Mahone spat out, hysteria dotting his statement. "When your child's life is out of your hands, you still do everything you can for them, and for that, you need everything there is to know. Or is that a life lesson field agents in counterterrorism are hardwired to be incapable of understanding?"

Mahone's breaths stilled as Jack glanced away. Steadying his hands by interlocking them through the chain-link fence, he drew his eyes across his visitor in one appraising sweep. Jack sensed his motives being dismantled into their starkest form.

"The reasoning isn't what matters to you," concluded Mahone.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that I can tell the difference between doing something for the good of the country and doing something for yourself. I've been trying to figure it out, Jack. Why you'd fight for your life in China – for two years – and then put it all on the line for this. It's something else. I can tell."

"You can't think I'd let innocent people die to fulfil a personal agenda."

"Then you'll have no problem giving to me, to the last detail, exactly what Ryan expects to get out of this," said Mahone. "Only he didn't tell you everything, did he? This is all for … what would you call your guy? A colleague? Relative? Friend? Another enemy?"

"Alex, I don't have time to –"

Mahone slammed a hand against the steel keeping him and Jack apart, rattling the fence and scything deeper into his visitor's nerves.

"You couldn't let me be at peace in prison – you had to put me in a worse one. You had to bring Cameron into this, again. You do all that, and then you sidestep when I ask for an answer. Don't even attempt to lie to me anymore and say that you don't know this guy. I'm through with that game. Who is he?"

When Jack didn't respond, Mahone pulled away from the fence, distilling a new surge of vehemence that crossed his face by shutting his eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere. Start talking, Jack. What is so important about Tony Almeida that you'd lay down your life to get him out of here?"


	6. Comrades

_Chapter 6: __Comrades_

* * *

"He was dead."

Mahone flitted his eyes open to see that Jack was finally meeting his gaze. Though his inclination to somehow garrotte the man through the chain-link fence overrode everything else, he discerned and felt a scratching of pity over the torment in Jack's expression.

It didn't take him long to find his anger again, however.

"Is that supposed to be some kind of charming little anecdotal oxymoron? What is that supposed to mean? You killed him and it didn't take? He followed in your footsteps and faked his death, and now you're looking to cut short his time as the next foreign prison cover boy?"

"I don't know all the details."

"Oh." Mahone kneaded his temple, glaring holes into the fence. "Well, here's what I know. You had more time to come up with a less pathetic explanation than that than I did in figuring out what the hell was going on before I was thrown in here."

Jack's voice went still duller as he replied, "I couldn't have warned you."

A spiel outlining how he had come to trust Jack more than the vast majority of people he knew, and the several ways in which he had demonstrated that during their brief term as FBI partners, flashed through Mahone's head. It made way for something more violent when he determined that the emotion in Jack's eyes fell far short of the practiced edge in his words.

With a low rumbling in his throat that came out as more of a snivel than the snarl he'd intended, he turned and walked away.

"Alex!" Jack called after him, his calm whisper vanishing. "If you don't hear what I have to say, even I won't be able to protect Cameron!"

Reality swam back into Mahone's consciousness. He rounded on Jack.

"Is that what it is? Really? I still know how this works. How long did it take you to plan this entire conversation out?"

Confusion took up a place on Jack's weary features. Mahone scoffed.

"The Company. Ryan, even. You bring up the bait … you swear on your life they'll be fine as long as this and that is done … without complications. Then when it's all over, everyone dies, anyway."

"Would I bother showing up here to trick you if you could see through it so easily?"

Mahone's face came a hair's breadth away from the fence.

"Well, gee, Jack – what _is_ your mission statement when it comes to Almeida? I could go back in there right now, find your guy, and kill him, no second thoughts. Unless you give them to me."

For the first time, Mahone could actually see the hardened professional he'd long ago figured his visitor out to be struggle to keep himself from shouting something sensible into their exchange. Jack swiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, gathering his priorities at the same time.

"A short while before I testified at your trial," Jack began hollowly, "I went to visit my daughter. I was intercepted on the way. Picked up by a convoy led by a woman going by the name of Jane. She explained that they were part of a renegade group which has dedicated itself to dismantling the Company."

"Founded by old man Scofield, among others." At Jack's pointed look, Mahone sneered. "Benefits of regular blackmail-and-tell sessions with Kellerman. Good old days and all that."

"I don't know what Paul told you and what he didn't, but I can't tell you much more. All this woman revealed was that Tony was alive, that the Company wanted him, and that we had to get to him first. They cannot obtain whatever it is that Tony has."

"So you can put all of our lives up in the air over _whatever it is_?" Mahone blasted. "You have no idea whether or not all of this could be for nothing!"

"Damn it, Alex, that's not –"

Jack broke off. He raised a placating hand, lowering his eyes as he measured up his words.

"Listen to me. I do know some things. Bare facts."

Mahone stemmed an oncoming headache with a hand to his forehead as Jack continued.

"Tony used to be co-head of a high-profile security firm. It mostly catered to foreign government officials looking for protection on the west coast. Six days before he disappeared, he received a request from the office of the French ambassador to the United States. It wasn't standard in two ways – first, the ambassador wanted to meet with Tony in Salt Lake to arrange a security detail for, second, a private trip down to Panama. The Tony I knew would never have accepted it, but he did. One week later, people were attending his funeral."

Dropping his hand, Mahone contemplated Jack's statement with furrowed brows. "So you knew him pretty well, huh?"

"For God's sake –"

"No, let's hear it, Jack. Please. Please explain the utter, rational logic in going to the man responsible for keeping you and your reanimated chum apart for so long, in order to break him out. For involving a murderer, and an engineer who could still betray someone straitjacketed inside a dark room, and – God, even a prison guard who, by the way, can't possibly have anything to do with any of this –"

"Are you rambling, or do you have a point?" interrupted Jack, staring at Mahone as though they had suddenly teleported within the confines of a psychiatric ward.

"If you wanted dear old Tony out so badly, you should have done it your own goddamned self!" Mahone yelled.

"I can't control what happens once you break out if I'm in there with you."

"And if me or Michael die first? Or is everyone else expendable when it comes to Tony?"

"You had no problem applying that principle to the Fox River Eight when it came to protecting your family. But I learned from you how futile doing that is."

Dry ice glazed over Mahone's expression in response to Jack's flare of temper. However, as he sucked in his breath and prepared to tear Jack a new rib cage, the guard in the foremost watchtower bellowed down at them in Spanish.

"I've got five minutes left," Jack translated, speeding up his words. "Alex. The code. If you know what it is, you have to tell me."

"I think we've had enough irony for today."

"Excuse me?"

"I had a friend who I thought died once, too," Mahone elaborated at last, jaw clenching. "On December 4, 1995. He was buried in his home town in Minnesota. That's it. You want more, you'll have to go to the source, who just happens to be the guy you're trying to screw over along with an entire conspiracy. Convenient how that works."

"Or you could track down Tony so he can tell me himself," said Jack, unfazed. "I'll be out here tomorrow. Get him to meet with me."

Backing away from the fence as another warning came from the watchtower, Mahone shook his head.

"He killed the last two people who tried raising to him a proposition like that, as I recall."

"That couldn't have been by his own hand. You even said it to Michael before. Tony isn't a murderer. If you get him alone, and talk to him – he'll come around."

But the conviction Mahone needed was lacking in the area it needed to be. Facing away from the gloomy depths of his visitor's eyes, he strode towards the doors leading back into Sona, leaving unsaid what had latched onto his mind as well as Jack's – that, given both of their track records, the man they were trying to save might very well no longer be on their side.

* * *

Mahone found Michael leaning against a wall on the inside of Sona's main atrium. With him was another inmate who, judging from the coldness rigidly written all over Michael's thin face, had not been a welcome sight.

Shifting focus from his conversation with Bellick, Michael spotted Mahone making his way across the courtyard. Mahone saw the younger man's squinting eyes trail over his left leg for a split second. A small smirk followed.

"Here," Mahone muttered, palming the photo Jack had given him over to Michael as he reached them. "Prize goose."

"I'm pretty sure he'd have a name," retorted Michael, studying the photo and showing no discernable signs of recognition.

"Does it really matter? You really think treating him like a human being, especially after everything he's done to _stay_ in here, is going to improve anything?"

"Oh, that's right – please let me say sorry if I forget about your sociopathic tendencies for even two seconds and try and make the right call."

"How much of that abundance of stupidity in your bleeding heart are you letting cloud your judgement? Trying to fit in a right and wrong when you're dealing with the Company is only going to allow you to feel really good about acting the moral angel after you've gotten yourself killed."

"Hey, hey now. Fudd and Bugs. I thought half the point of staying alive in here was not drawing attention in the spadefuls."

Bellick, who had been inspecting the photo over Michael's shoulder, was now glancing warily around the three of them. True to his observation, more than a few of the other inmates were watching the bickering Americans in their midst – some with apathy, but most with enmity.

Mahone lowered his voice.

"I don't care. I'm finding this guy. I'm finding him, with or without your help, and I'm doing whatever it takes to get him out of here. You want to stick to your high horse a while longer? Because I'll have no problem leaving you behind, as long as you have no problem seeing your girlfriend tossed in prison for murder one."

"That's not fair, Alex."

"You've been here longer than us," Mahone said, ignoring the petulant engineer and addressing Bellick. "Are there any places you can think of where a man could hide in here, for weeks on end?"

"Why? You want tea with the guy so you can ask off the side that he stop trying to kill us?"

"Brad," snapped Mahone, ripping his baleful glare away from Michael.

For a reason Mahone couldn't fathom, Bellick's face had turned several shades paler over something that had just been said. Under Mahone's intense scrutiny, however, the former guard quickly cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders.

"Okay, okay," he started. "Uh … off the top of my head … yeah, there's a couple places, I think. The vent shafts … the sewer system … there's another set of underground tunnels, I'm pretty sure …"

"I noticed something about the pipelines earlier today," Michael broke in. "I'll take the sewers."

Michael had already moved off before Mahone could figure out that he had agreed to join the search party. Grinding his teeth, he made to follow the younger man, only to be stopped in his tracks by Bellick's hand on his shoulder.

"What about me?"

"Find the kid from this morning and follow him," Mahone rushed out, pulling himself out of Bellick's grip. "If you get nothing, meet us here again."

"How the hell am I supposed to find that pipsqueak brat?"

But Mahone was already cutting his way across the courtyard. He barked Michael's name out to the con's retreating back. Michael halted before the yawning entrance to a set of downward-spiralling stairs, having already opened the door to the sewers. Reaching him, Mahone reeled at the already palpable stench wafting up to them.

"Something else?" asked Michael, scowling from the sewer entrance to Mahone.

Mahone managed to still his rage-trembling hands enough to retrieve the water flask stowed inside his jacket. At the sight of it, the smirk that had been playing on Michael's lips for the last ten minutes widened.

"The next time you put drugs stolen from a seven-foot killing machine in my water," Mahone hissed, eyes wild, "try _warning me_ first!"

In a tone that reached unprecedentedly condescending levels even for himself, Michael responded, "You're not limping anymore, are you?"

"You son of a bitch –"

"What have you got to be more burned up about, Alex? That you got beaten up – which was nothing more than you deserved, by the way, and I'm not sorry for a single moment that you were – or that you need these now?"

Reaching into the pocket of his hooded top, Michael pulled out a plastic container half taped over with a faded prescription label. Mahone's fingers twitched as he eyed the pills through the container's orange veneer.

"So, what?" he spat after a round of tense silence. "You going to make me play good fido by holding the possibility of my leg going gangrene over me? There are probably dozens more sources of antibiotics in here. So you sure as hell better reconsider before you expect me to beg."

A momentary flutter of Michael's large hazel eyes convinced Mahone that the con had been thinking of doing exactly that. The thought passed unexpectedly, and Mahone found his hands reaching up to catch the container as Michael tossed it to him.

"There's nothing I need from you to go to that much trouble," Michael said, turning and descending the stairs. "That doesn't mean I can't enjoy the fact you're in my debt now."

Transgressing from anger to a sliver of amusement and back again as he watched the darkness of the sewers slither over Michael's form, Mahone took a while too long to stop him. Michael paused at the sound of his name, his eagerness to get away so that he could cope with his new predicament alone becoming abundantly clear.

When he at last flicked his eyes to Mahone, the last of his arrogance had drained from his face. The lack of any confidence in Michael's stare unsettled Mahone more than he could have imagined. He felt sick looking at him.

Embarrassed, he muttered, "His name's Tony Almeida."

Michael sighed.

"I know."

And before Mahone could make sense of it, Michael was gone.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon was spent scouring Sona for any vestiges of a man who, even for Mahone who had lived a life that had allowed him to see a lot of things, seemed the sum part of an impossibility.

Though his memory hardly approached photographic, his heightened circumstances had seared into his brain Tony's details. He had deduced from his file and everything else Jack had imparted that Tony had vanished within days of Lincoln Burrows being arrested for the murder of Terrence Steadman, Jack being abducted by the Chinese government, and himself being assigned the Oscar Shales manhunt.

It wasn't logical that the ever-expanding web he was part of had trapped its victims all within the same fortnight. Yet he had made the hellish connections a long time ago.

The introduction of something that finally made sense in his life wasn't proving a comfort.

Doing the rounds of Sona, he ran into Bellick three times. The former CO wasn't having much more luck than he was, and the frustration in their short exchanges before they moved on grew with each meeting.

Michael, on the other hand, appeared to have found something of fruition, or died, down in the sewers, as he hadn't emerged.

Red strains of the setting sun had begun to streak the horizon by the time Mahone was ready to break his promise to stay away. Abandoning his efforts to break into one of the facility's larger air ducts, he headed back to the sewer entrance.

Free from the reverie that had allowed him to focus on finding Tony for six straight hours, Mahone noticed with more clarity the hatred he had garnered within the space of a day. The other inmates seemed to not take lightly the outcome of that morning's fight. None made a move to replicate his fallen opponent's decision to attack him, mercifully, and the reasoning behind the inmates' aggressiveness remaining passive only further troubled him.

The ever burgeoning list of problems with more than a one hundred percent chance of ending with his son's burial was quickly relegated. Emerging into the courtyard, Mahone found himself arrive just in time to catch the best lead to Tony climbing up and out of the sewers' staircase.

Fright dotted the gaunt-figured boy's expression. Mahone ducked back into the hallway he'd come from as the prudent chocolate brown eyes darted in his direction. Questioning how such a young child could have ended up in Sona, Mahone felt a stab of solicitude towards him.

It disintegrated, however, when a few minutes passed and Michael still didn't follow the boy out of the sewers.

Though Mahone was certain his cellmate was maintaining his daily quota of mortal peril at that very moment, he was unable to care about anything more than the boy's rapidly disappearing figure. Moving after his target and away from the sewers, he reasoned that if something had happened to Michael, it was already too late to do anything about it.

The boy was surprisingly good. He moved at just the right speed and kept to just the right shadows in order to avoid attracting attention, while at the same time making the task of following him a difficult one. It was only his occasional awkward glance around himself that clued Mahone in to the fact that he had been trained by a very experienced ex-CTU agent on how to become invisible.

Fortunately, Mahone had the advantage of years on his side. He easily stayed on the boy as he double backed for the third time. Rounding a corner and arriving in one of Sona's more brightly lit corridors, he stopped dead and felt a mad impulse to laugh course through him.

It was the corridor that had been his first introduction to Sona only one night earlier.

To improve matters, the boy had pulled another vanishing act. Mahone glanced at the first open door in the corridor – the one leading into the church room – and immediately suspected that the boy was even better at the game than he'd let on.

Yet Mahone was more than happy to satisfy head on Tony's eagerness to meet with him by having him led into a trap. After taking precaution and skulking in the corridor before surmising that the boy was well and truly gone, Mahone slipped into the church room.

It was, of course, empty. Shutting the door, he cut through the middle aisle, eyes faded. His saunter turned into a limp as he reached the front of the room.

Defeat suddenly took hold of him in the form of an unbearable exhaustion. He slumped downwards. He missed the bench behind him by a good margin, however, and ended up on his rear on the filthy floor.

He cried.

The festering wound that had gnawed at him even before he had ended up in Sona, and which had nothing to do with the ache in his leg, had never felt worse. Even in the lifetime that had preceded his current hell, he had retained hope.

But Pam was gone now. And even if he managed to save Cameron, there was no chance his son could ever have the normal life he so desperately wanted for him. As long as the Company held the right cards over him as they had done for more than half his life, there was nothing he –

A noise like a muffled cough brought Mahone's head up from his knees.

Hurriedly scrubbing the tears from his face, he leapt to his feet. The room's exit was still sealed shut, and the room itself was still empty. Swivelling around, he wildly searched the room, only to continue coming up with thin air.

It was then that he discovered evidence he wasn't alone. A flash of red catching his eye, he crouched back down to the floor. Picking up the slim slab of wax with excited fingers, he brushed off the dust clinging to it to see that one of its ends was a blackened stump.

He was soon drawn to a corner of the room. There he discovered that what he had dismissed as a pile of junk was in fact a tablecloth and several more burnt out candles. It was junk that had been swept off a table in order for it to be used for something else.

Like reaching up to the ceiling.

Carefully moving to the back of the room, Mahone didn't bother to search for a weapon before climbing onto the wooden table stationed there. Steadying his balance, he pressed his palms against the ceiling, digging for an opening. Finding it, he pushed upwards with all of his strength.

It took him the greater part of five minutes to lift himself up through the circular entrance to Tony's inner sanctum. Crawling on his belly to make it the rest of the way inside, he rolled onto his back, his breath coming out in a rattle from between gritted teeth.

The first thing he spotted when he sat up was that his struggle into the hideout had freed a makeshift rope, causing it to tumble down the hole and allow easy access for anyone who might follow him. He rolled his eyes.

Despite being cramped enough to bar Mahone from standing, the space was larger than he'd figured at first glance. He was able to straighten up onto his knees. Craning his head around, he noted that Tony was living with far more luxuries than expected. The gaunt-figured boy was obviously as good a supplier as he was a snitch.

A pile of papers drew Mahone's attention. Shuffling over, he gathered a bundle into his hands. With a simultaneous frown and raise of his eyebrows, he acknowledged that the scribbled numbers which covered each page made up one sprawling code he wasn't going to crack any time soon – and, judging from the notes pencilled in next to the printed numbers, Tony had hardly even managed to scratch.

Mahone pushed aside four maroon-coloured packages with stamping that he recognised as being French-designated and burrowed further into the pile. Finding nothing of greater use, he reached the bottom, and came across a photograph.

It was the cleanest and most well-kept thing in the hideout. It showed Tony, and a woman Mahone didn't know.

Nevertheless, he knew as soon as he took a closer look who she must be. Tony had his arms wrapped around her in a loving embrace, and his beam was only barely outshone by the smile etched onto her beautiful face. Feeling as though he had just violated something sacred, even with everything he was planning to do once he found Tony, Mahone set the photo down.

And then he let out a small yell, drawing his hand up to his chest in a split second recoil. He had dropped the photo on what he had assumed was a particularly clean section of carpet. But his fingers had felt something warm through the material.

It was a blanket. With one savage slicing motion, he threw it open.

Horror filled his eyes as he met the glassy-eyed stare of Bradley Bellick. A wet cloth covered his forehead, and bruises covered his body, and he was dead.

All reason gone, Mahone shoved as many papers as he could into his jacket before throwing himself back down the hideout exit. He let go of the makeshift rope as he felt his feet land on the wooden table. At the same time, the table was abruptly pulled out from under him.

He toppled. Crashing hard onto the ground, the back of his head smacking against the corner of one of the church room's benches, he was saved from blacking out only by the adrenaline roaring through his body. He wasn't spared any pain, though.

It took him a moment to register that a fist was repeatedly smashing into his face.

When he raised his hands, trying to muster anything within himself that could stop the relentless attack, he was wrenched upwards and promptly thrown face-first back onto the ground. A second later, a knee dug into the crook of his back. Hands with startling strength wrapped around his throat.

Thinking fast even as he felt the life being squeezed out of him, he scissored an arm backwards between those of his assailant's, preventing his neck from being broken. He attempted to pry himself free with his other hand, with considerable less success.

"You don't have to do this," he rasped, using up the last of his breath in a final bid for his life. "I'm here to help you. You don't have to do this anymore!"

"Sorry, Alex," came the reply from above him, "but there's no choice here. You're the one I need to take out to end this all."

Before Mahone could react, the door to the church room opened, and Michael appeared, followed closely by the last person he could have expected – Tony.


	7. Doomed To Repeat Them

_Chapter 7: __Doomed To Repeat Them_

* * *

Michael had enough experience with the dark to no longer be irritated by it. Stenches of the headache-inducing kind were another matter.

Progressing around another corner of the sewer tunnel and taking in another endless black expanse, he considered again the good three-quarter chance that his hypothesis was mistaken on an infinitely larger scale.

Of course, his addiction to seeing his plans through – unlimited possible derailments and all – had been stoked so frequently over the last few weeks that it had transformed into a fatalistic, and prevalent, inner logic.

Part of that shift in his mindset was an obsession with contingencies.

He had just begun to ruminate on what was waiting for him at the entrance to the sewers, desperate for more reasons to keep searching for an exit he was getting less sure even existed, when the ladder came into view.

As he reached it and gazed up to where it led with a small smile, he reminded himself that finding a pathway into a potential war zone hardly equated to victory. Letting out a breath that had been held in for what felt like hours, he climbed.

The ascent was short. It took him longer to pry open the metal cover barring his way into the building, and when he at last managed to fight his way up and out of the murkiness, he had never been more glad to end up inside a janitor's closet.

Unexpectedly, he had less trouble cleaning his suit to satisfactorily inconspicuous levels than he did in wiping his shoes down.

After spending a few minutes surveilling the hallway outside – weighing up at the same time how long it would take to get to a shower once he reached the car again – he slipped out into the inferno.

Pent-up anxiety and adrenaline combined into an instant bombardment of his senses by his surroundings. Though there were still more times than not when he wished he could switch off his low-latent inhibition at will, his recent experiences with covert operations had taught him to appreciate more than ever his fractured way of taking in the world. Acknowledging everything there was to see around him helped when it came to staying out of the line of fire.

Bar his last act of 'covertness' involving an elevator shaft and a man who had already mastered in one day what Lincoln hadn't succeeded in doing in his entire lifetime – namely, getting on … no, ripping apart and _obliterating_ … his nerves.

Michael shook away thoughts of the stranger's cold stare as he halted in front of a door. It was indistinguishable from the other doors in the exquisitely arranged hallway – he narrowed his eyes and forced himself to focus again – except for a number stencilled into its wooden surface.

He heard voices.

But there would be no better chance of finding a way to contact _him_ than what he had at hand right now. He had to try.

Taking the chance that the room wasn't empty over the possibility of his being able to discover the secret to invisibility in the time it would take the people around the corner to reach him, he twisted the doorknob and slid inside.

Luck at last decided to side with him. The room was abandoned, and the intruders passed by without pausing a step. He ran a hand over the door, hoping to lock it. Realising he would need a key with an absence which meant that someone could be returning at any moment, he sighed and spun around.

His search shrank in prudence the longer it went on. The file cabinets were, thankfully, organised in alphabetical order. Less reassuring was the precious amount of time which passed before he found the section he wanted and began to flick through the assorted tabbed names.

Nothing.

Shoulders sagging, he double-checked, before shutting the drawer in quiet defeat. Despite knowing he had already overstayed his break-and-enter, he remained rooted to the spot.

A raised fragment of carpet snagged by a corner of the second file cabinet from the left, which had been annoying the edges of his mind for the last few minutes, finally caught his full attention.

For Michael, everyday things pertinent to the issue at hand which even then by common sense shouldn't stick out like the proverbial sore thumb … did. The worn-out carpeting screamed at him now, and he braced himself against the excitement which involuntarily welled up inside him.

He pulled. He had put no thought into the action, but surprise caught up with him as he felt the heavy cabinet slide away from the wall.

Dust. Shutter doors. Peeling beige paint. Openings angled at 27 degrees. Cobwebs.

Michael understood as soon as he opened the walk-in closet's doors and stepped inside that it provided sanctuary to only a few select people, with any cleaners evidently being non-existent on the list. He waved a hand over his face, brushing away an oncoming sneeze, as he stopped in front of most likely the most important occupant the enclosure had ever had – a sole file cabinet.

A malicious glint hardened his eyes as he pulled open the top drawer.

ABBOTT, AIMES, ALDERLEY, ALMEIDA, ATTWOOD, BAKER, BAUER, BRINKER, BURKE …

BURROWS, Aldo.

The smirk had barely settled on his face when the shrill wail of an alarm broke through the air.

* * *

_Two months later – Panama City, Panama_

* * *

Michael had been in sewer systems before, and he could tell Sona's was far from the norm – the tunnels he was plucking his way through at the current moment were merely a more disgusting extension of an already abundant wasteland.

However, despite the putridity assaulting his senses, it was here that he felt the most calm since his arrival at Sona. He didn't doubt that finally being free of Mahone's presence, at least for the moment, played the majority part in that sentiment.

It had been hard for Michael, going back to prison with so many questions and so much death over his head, and having no-one to turn to for help. But he would sooner die than ask for it from Mahone. Though he knew Mahone had done things that were within his own capacity when it came to protecting Lincoln and LJ, and Sara, another part of him gleaned more pleasure from seeing the ex-FBI agent suffer under the hateful gaze which took no effort at all on his part.

And yet, he was now obliged to find and help another man exactly like Mahone – a Company pawn who had ruined his life all over again, inadvertently or not.

He paused at a bend in the tunnel. Something like a cough had reverberated around it, causing him to tense and silence for the last time his desire to give up the search. After a few seconds of intense perusal of the situation, before it dawned on him that if Tony decided to kill him he himself would be able to do absolutely nothing about it, he took the corner.

"Senor."

Michael jumped, spinning away from the empty passage in front of him back to the one he had just left. A pitifully thin boy was standing not more than a few feet away from him. Michael winced at the pure innocence and granite suspicion intermingled into one in the boy's expression.

"What are you doing here?" he whispered.

The trap hadn't been blindingly obvious enough to overcome Michael's fatigue. As a result, he was taken completely unawares as a pair of strong hands grabbed him from behind and smashed him into the closest wall.

Pain shot through his face as he felt the wall's rugged surface digging into his skin. It was only when he tried to push backwards with his body and swing a punch at his attacker – and failed on both counts – that he realised why the words being shouted from the other person's mouth sounded so jarring.

"Go back to the attic and see if the American is alright!" his attacker yelled in Spanish. "I'm alright here! Go!"

Michael grunted as he watched the gaunt-figured boy run towards the sewer exit, feeling at the same time his right arm being wrenched behind his back. His heart's frantic tattoo began to deplete his oxygen supply as the man behind him leaned in closer to hiss his next words.

"You people should have learnt your lesson by now."

The statement brought Michael back to life. He raised his head, no longer willing to accept death so easily. Anger disabling his aversion to pain, he ripped his left elbow out from between his chest and the wall and rammed it into his attacker's side.

The man's resulting yell and loosened grip allowed Michael to push himself free.

"If you know I'm Company," he said in Spanish, dancing out of swinging distance as the man swiped at him with the hand that wasn't clutching his side, "maybe you should consider the futility of pretending you're a native Panamanian. I know who you are."

Michael regretted not getting straight to the point as Tony promptly sprang at him, tackling him downwards. Before Michael could digest that he might very well be spending his last seconds on earth with his body half swallowed up by sewage water, the other man's fist blasted into his face.

"How can all of you be so stupid!" shouted Tony, switching to English. "How can you work for people who couldn't care less whether I killed you, right here? Who consider national security and honour and integrity even more expendable than their own people? This is your own fault! This is your own goddamn fault, you son of a bitch!"

It was at the fifth punch that Michael realised that Tony was steeling himself for the killing blow. Not particularly agreeable to suffering a slow and agonising death at the hands of a morally confused assailant, he swung his head away from the next hit, and yelled what essentially was a plea for his life.

"My name's Michael Scofield!"

The blow still connected, and the next one after that. The pain soon stopped, however. Feeling Tony move off him, Michael opened his eyes. Hurting, it seemed, even in places he had never known could hurt, he stood.

Recognition finally prevailed in Tony's expression over the automatic distrust birthed from the darkness of the sewer tunnels as he stared at Michael.

"How did you know I was here?" he asked.

"I didn't," Michael replied in a vehement voice. "Someone else sent me to get you out of here. Jack Bauer has a message for you."

* * *

Michael had to get out of there.

As it began to feel as though the alarm's shriek was digging a hole directly through his skull, he went over his limited options – hide in his present location and hope that no-one currently in the building knew about its existence, or run and pull off an escape from the building undetected.

Calculating that the probable success rate of each scenario was 1% compared to 0%, he made his decision and reached for the cabinet outside, pulling it back into place. The shutter doors were mercifully quiet as they clicked shut. Huddling against a corner of the closet, praying that Lincoln wouldn't do anything rash, he froze as it became apparent that the footsteps he could hear reverberating all around him were in fact coming from someone right out in the next room.

A voice was muttering something Michael couldn't make out through the barrier between him and certain death. Petrified, he squinted upwards through the darkness, fighting around his claustrophobia in search of an elevated hiding spot.

"I had a feeling you'd show up here."

Michael jumped, spinning back in the direction of the other room. The smooth voice had sounded like its owner could see through the wall separating them. It was only when a second voice replied that he began to gather what was going on.

"I follow up on all of my leads, Paul. Even if that means wasting two minutes of my life figuring out how to bypass your pitiful security."

The second voice was defiant. Fearless, even – far calmer than what Michael knew he would be if he were ever to be caught breaking into a government facility. He wondered whether the infiltration attempt by the man no more than a few feet away from him was a consequence of or a coincidentally coinciding event to his own break-in.

Outside, he heard Paul laugh, and the door to the room shut in place.

"They told me you were brilliant. But I was not counting on you to find out about this room until at least the second week of the manhunt."

"Let me out."

"What exactly did you think you could achieve by coming here today?" Paul asked, an eerie pitch peeling back the slick layers of his voice to reveal the menace underneath. "Do you really think it's as simple as filching a couple of files from us, throwing them together in a do-it-yourself bring-down-an-entire-corporate-faction kit, and shipping it off to the courts? And then you'd be home free? Are you that stupid?"

There was silence for a moment. "Let me out."

"I don't think I made myself clear enough during our meeting yesterday. When I told you to follow orders without questioning them, a natural, unspoken extension of that was that doing the opposite of that would mean exposure of what you did to a certain, balding psychopath after he taunted you one time too many."

"Some things never change, huh?"

"That's good, Alex. You'll need a sense of humour to keep up with Scofield."

Michael closed his eyes, willing the ability to melt into the wall to spring up inside him within the next minute.

"I have something to show you," continued Paul. After a moment, during which Michael perceived a flash of movement through the sliver of the cabinets outside the closet, he went on, "And I hope the message sinks in enough that you can remember it the next time you decide to stroll into another restricted area of one of our facilities."

Michael heard nothing for so long that he almost thought the men had left the room.

Then several things happened at once. A snarl full of enough ice to frost over Michael's spine shot through the air. There was another flash of movement – and then, in quick succession, the click of the hammer of a gun.

Michael didn't need his eyes to see the second man back up as quickly as he'd sprung forward. There was no emotion left in Paul's voice as he spoke.

"So smart, Alex! Attacking anyone who ticks off your personal radar of selfishness. If you've trained yourself to be that idiotic when it comes to the mere mention of Pamela and Cameron, you can just as easily convince yourself to not care one bit about the lives of Scofield, Burrows, Abruzzi, Apolskis …"

"Stop," the second man said.

For a reason he couldn't fathom, Michael felt the same defeat he could hear in the second man's voice seep through his entire body as he went on.

"I will kill you regardless of anything if you touch my family."

"I never mentioned going anywhere near your family," Paul said, a glint of metal signalling to Michael that the gun aimed at the second man had lowered. "We're talking scenarios here. But don't be complacent and think that everything I've said to you has been full of liberal doses of hot air. You should be aware of the dangers of any kind of complacency considering your … background."

Michael knew his nerves wouldn't be able to cope much longer as more silence permeated the room.

A single, questioning word broke it.

"Why?"

"Why what, Alex? Why you? Why all of them? Do you really want to stand around all day having a heart-to-heart about how unfair life is? Or – here's a better idea –

getting all of this out of the way as soon as you can so that we never have to talk about how you're on track to rack up a strike every day that this manhunt goes on?"

"Then let me out!"

"Tell me you understand that you're out of leeway from this point onwards."

The second man made a mirthless noise that fell far short of a laugh.

"I am doing this, Paul. All of them. Fine. But I am not your lapdog."

The fake pleasantness returned to Paul's voice as he replied, "We wouldn't have brought you on if we expected you to be that weak."

Michael swallowed as no response came from the second man.

Both men exited the room soon afterwards. The sound of the door shutting behind the pair, along with their disappearing footsteps, was the sweetest sound to pierce Michael's ears since he had experienced the dying strains of Fox River's warning siren and search patrols three days earlier.

At last gaining the courage to move, he lifted the file in his hands. It most likely contained more information about his father than even Lincoln possessed. Hence his original plan to take the whole thing with him if he managed to get out of the building in one piece.

However, the possibility of blame for the missing file falling on the other man, possibly bringing harm to his wife and son in the process, stifled the curiosity that had burned within Michael for nearly three decades.

Allowing a lifetime of pent-up issues with his father to rise to the surface in order to bury the myriad more questions he had about him, he stuffed the file back into the concealed cabinet, and made his way out of the enclosure without looking back.

* * *

The look in Tony's eyes at the sound of the name was laced with so much spite and sorrow that Michael had to glance away.

"You might as well have brought up my wife if you were reaching for a name to convince me to trust you."

Michael made eye contact with the other man again. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how my wife and Jack were killed on the same day two years ago!" spat Tony, moving closer to Michael who in turn shrank back. "Jack Bauer is dead. Do you think I'd be in here if he was still alive?"

"He's not dead." Off Tony's look, Michael continued, "I would not be standing here trying to have a rational conversation with you if I was trying to trick you. You have to believe that … I talked with Jack this morning."

"You're worse than a liar, Michael. You're an incompetent one."

"I'm a terrible deliverer of coherent sentences after people try to kill me!"

Tony halted under a dilapidated section of the sewage ceiling through which a crack of light had found its way, and Michael garnered his first good look of the man.

There were traces, in the visage of the man before him, of the handsome, self-assured CTU agent from the photo Jack had shown him. At the same time, a stark sadness and weariness tainted his features. Michael would have guessed that they were separated by at least a decade if he didn't already know that Tony wasn't more than a few years older than him.

He also looked half out of his mind.

"Prove it," he hissed at Michael. "Prove Jack sent you."

"How long have you been here, Tony?" whispered Michael. "What happened to you?"

The sympathy Michael couldn't help but allow into his words had a maddening effect on Tony. Clamping a hand around Michael's neck and slamming him against the wall in a chokehold, he screamed into his face.

"_I said prove yourself first!"_

"12199504!" Michael managed, battling his panic at the savage change in Tony's composure. He had witnessed something like it only once before in one other person – an ex-federal agent who had been trapped in a cage in a deserted factory in Gila, New Mexico.

Michael could only imagine what being trapped in Sona for months on end must have done to Tony's mind.

Tony laughed. "Ryan could just as well have told you that."

"But I can't tell you anything else about Jack. He hasn't exactly been accommodating of personal conversation since he got back from China."

The iron fist around Michael's throat slackened enough to allow him air, while still keeping him pinned.

"China?" echoed Tony, tightened mouth falling apart slightly in horror.

Michael reached up and tore Tony's hand from his neck. He was met with no resistance from the stunned man. Taking a few moments to breathe air back into his lungs, he nodded.

"Yes. You were a part of it. I know. And it was all for nothing. But not because Jack died. Because the Chinese government found out he was alive."

"My wife died because she made the sacrifice of protecting the fact Jack was alive," Tony said, despair eclipsing his rage. "That's why I'm here. Once he was gone, and President Palmer, and … Michelle, there was no point."

"And Chloe O'Brian?" Tony stared at him, and Michael let out a breath. "What will it take to convince you that I'm telling the truth?"

"The only rational reason Jack would stay in China for two years without contacting anyone at home would be if he was held there against his will in an interrogation camp."

Michael said nothing. Putting the rest of the story together on his own, Tony stepped away from where he was pressing Michael against the wall. He lowered his head as he raised a hand to his eyes.

With an uncomfortable lurch of his stomach, Michael realised that tears had sprung where Tony was now shielding his face. He waited a long moment after Tony had turned away before he spoke.

"What do the numbers mean?"

"Shut up!" Tony snapped.

Michael felt his patience sliding further into debt to his own sanity as he hurled back, "No. We don't have time for this. This isn't all about you and what you've suffered at the hands of the Company! People I care about are going to die, exactly like yours did, unless you accept that your part in this isn't over. You have to come with me, now!"

Facing him again, Tony took on a near-inhuman aura as he snarled his answer.

"Go to hell."

He walked away, leaving Michael at the intersection of the sewer tunnel. For the first time, he envied Mahone's ability to understand people on such a fundamental level that he was able to manipulate most of them into doing whatever he wanted.

"You won't do this even for Jack?" he finally called after the vanishing figure in the distance.

Tony rounded on him.

"Especially because of Jack! What does he think he's doing, dragging himself back into this again? He doesn't understand. You don't understand … no-one understands until they end up dead."

"Understand what?"

Tony blinked upwards, staring at anything but Michael.

"That you can't win. There's no end with the Company. Trying to end a fight with them only brings more bodies to the morgue. It's all goddamn useless, and Jack should've stayed out of it. Damn it!"

"Is that why you had yourself incarcerated here?" Michael asked, as Tony clasped a hand over his forehead. "Because you gave up? I honestly want to know. How is a life spent in hiding from the Company any better than at least attempting to bring them down?"

"It helps you appreciate the idiotic naivety of others all the more," Tony bit back.

"Jack wants to see you. To talk things over. Please, just do that." As Tony shook his head, Michael could hear a part of his voice break as he continued, "This isn't for me. Please."

Michael had long ago stopped caring about controlling any emotion in his voice. Something in his last few words had a positive effect, however, as Tony stopped his retreat and returned to where he stood.

They measured each other up – a twin trait borne out of their individual, horrific experiences with the Company. Then, moving past Tony towards the sewer exit, Michael drew the man to follow him in a cautious gait a few paces behind him.

"Is Jack here?" Tony questioned.

"No," replied Michael, not even bothering to explain that he had no idea where Jack was or what he was doing. "He'll see you tomorrow morning in the visitation area."

Tony drew back his shoulders as they reached the bottom of the staircase leading up from the sewers. Michael waited, expecting a threat along the lines that if Tony found out he was lying about Jack, he wouldn't be seeing the next day in.

Instead, Tony sighed. "Jack would be here."

Michael's reply was hushed as he led the way up the stairs.

"Sometimes you just have to accept that the people you care about can't pay back everything they owe."

Michael flinched as Tony brushed past him at the surface, wholly ignoring his comment and pointing them both in the direction of Sona's main atrium.

"And that they shouldn't have to," he added quietly.

* * *

Lincoln was gone.

Clutching his chest, the long run he had made through the sewers catching up with his respiratory system, Michael searched the clearing where they had parked. When he finally decided that something as conspicuous as an 80s-model car with his brother sitting in the driver's seat couldn't very well be hiding in the shrubbery, he fished his cell phone out from his jacket pocket and dialled the number of the phone he had given Lincoln.

As the other end refused to pick up, images of Lincoln being marched straight from police custody to a chair and a metal helmet joined the already wild scenarios playing in Michael's head concerning LJ's current fate.

"Damn it!" he yelled out to the empty lot, eyes blazing at the display on his phone.

Zero reception.

Running both hands over his head, now in the firm cusp of losing it, Michael thought at first that the familiar thrum of the car was a hopeful figment of his imagination. It wasn't until he heard a screech of tires and a gruff shout that he looked up.

"Hey, perfect timing. Let's go."

Michael stared at Lincoln, eyes protuberant. He raised himself to his full height as he walked towards the waiting car and climbed into the passenger seat.

"Where were you?" he asked slowly, anxiety still racing through him.

Lincoln shrugged as he backed the car out of the clearing.

"Couldn't reach the Arizona juvenile offender department from here. So, I drove until I managed to place a call."

Blinking at his brother, Michael realised that Lincoln's temporary disappearance had had nothing to do with the alarm that had gone off in the building he had just broken into for both of their sakes. Lincoln caught onto Michael's stupefaction immediately.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Michael said, leaning back against his seat as the car reached the road. A few seconds passed before he shook his head. "No. Wait. You called around looking for LJ?"

Lincoln hesitated before he replied, more than knowledgeable about the danger signs in Michael's voice which were always evident before they descended into shouting matches with each other.

"Yeah. So?"

"So do you want them to know that we were here today? There is no way they haven't been monitoring every aspect of LJ's life since Cook County Courthouse, and yes, Linc, that includes any telephone queries about him made to the very facility he's been jailed at."

"Don't talk down to me, Michael," growled Lincoln. "I know it was dangerous. But what else do you expect me to do? Let my son rot in prison? Slide off my back the fact we couldn't save him from your psychic agent friend, and say that I tried my best?"

"You could have waited half an hour for me to get back."

"I've tried my best LJ's whole life," Lincoln went on, bypassing Michael's heated reasoning. "That's never been good enough. Now I have the chance to do everything I can for him. No more excuses. I won't screw up this chance."

"You shouldn't try and contact him," Michael sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "It'll only do more harm than good."

"Yeah, right. And calling Sara and crying to her about your fairy-tale relationship was such a better idea."

Michael tore his swimming eyes from the road to glare at Lincoln. A lump was already visible in his brother's throat. It was a sure sign that Lincoln knew he had gone too far, and Michael glanced away again.

"I'm sorry, Mike."

"I don't want to fight."

"Fine."

They passed several traffic intersections before Lincoln chose to speak again.

"Did you get anything on Dad?"

"No."

Michael hated being mocked by Lincoln for the overwhelming solicitude he held towards others in need. He hated it enough to know that he would never share with his brother the conversation he had overheard that afternoon from within the hidden enclosure.

"Heh. No big deal. We don't need the old man's help getting to Panama. We've already got your brain."

Michael studied his brother from the corner of his eye. "You wouldn't want to see him for anything else?"

"Like what?" Lincoln scoffed.

The car descended into silence. Michael pushed thoughts of his father aside, focusing his mind on the inevitable obstacles he and Lincoln would face in Utah upon their arrival.

It took him a long time to understand that he had given up his last chance to understand the man his father was to save the man who would become his killer.

* * *

The first thing that caught Michael's attention as he entered the church room Tony had led him back to was the sight of Mahone being choked to death by a pair of hands belonging to Paul Kellerman.

Michael stood just inside the door, staring wide-eyed at the scene. Mahone was on the ground, with the man who months earlier had doled out a similar treatment to Lincoln – and come seconds away from success – digging a knee into his back to stop him from freeing himself.

A part of Michael knew he had to act. Another part of him felt something else at witnessing the imminent death of the man who had murdered his father.

Relief.

It was terrifying.

His heart jolted as Mahone managed to lift his head long enough to connect their gaze. Before Michael could stop it, the presupposition that he truly would not care if Mahone died right at that moment passed between them.

Someone shoved Michael aside from behind, causing him to break eye contact with his cellmate.

"_What are you doing?_"

Tony headed straight for the struggling pair, a cursory glance at Michael indicating he had spoken in equal parts to both him and Kellerman. The latter at last noticed their presence, but didn't move away from Mahone as Tony came up behind him.

"When I throw him at you," Tony tossed out to Michael in Spanish, "hit him in the throat as hard as you can and get him on the ground!"

Unexpectedly, Kellerman released Mahone and swiftly turned around to deliver a fist into Tony's ribcage. Tony crashed backwards, his spine hitting the hard edge of one of the church room's wooden benches and causing him to crumble even more painfully to the floor.

"Think my Spanish is that rusty, Almeida?" jeered Kellerman, his command of the same language near-perfect as Tony made a noise signalling a tumult of hurt surging through his insides.

Michael's eyes switched from Mahone's groaning figure on the floor to Tony's groaning figure a few feet away, with Kellerman in between them and advancing fast on the latter.

He spoke before he thought. "Don't!"

Kellerman halted, but didn't look behind him as he responded, "Trust me, Michael, the sooner I take care of this problem, the sooner you can ride off into the sunset with Sara."

"Don't believe a word he says, Michael," Tony gasped, using the few seconds Kellerman had been distracted to place a good distance between them. "A man he attacked earlier today should be down here. He just killed him!"

"Me? I just put out of commission the actual killer!"

"Think my fact-checking skills are that rusty, Kellerman?" Tony said, pointing at Mahone. "He hasn't been Company for the last ten years. Shove your tricks and surrender, or I swear to God, you're dead!"

Mahone staggered upright onto his feet.

"Does anyone mind taking the time to deal with this situation_ in a language I can understand_?"

The numerous murderous thoughts being projected around the room with the mere utilisation of narrowed eyes began to overload Michael's senses. As the other three men continued their verbal abuse of each other, he kneaded his temples with clammy hands.

After a few minutes, he regained his focus and murmured to Kellerman, "How did you end up in Sona?"

"Shut up, Michael," hissed Mahone, twisting around to strike him down with the mere force of his laser-blue eyes. "Don't you care that Bellick just died in this room? That another body's just been added to your list? But you probably burn that list on a daily basis, don't you?"

Michael's teeth ground together of their own accord. His patience finally tipped over its limit as he stared back unflinchingly at Mahone.

"If you want someone to blame for Pamela's murder," he replied in cold steel, "move on from me and blame yourself for not being there when she needed you the most."

Kellerman rolled his eyes and turned away as disbelief took hold of Tony's own features.

Mahone's face remained frozen into a look of pure hatred.

"I am not that weak."

"If it helps you sleep at night, fine," Michael replied in a half-exasperated and half-waspish voice. He shifted his gaze to Tony and Kellerman. "But you should bury it. All of you. You've all worked for the Company –" he hesitated as he eyed Tony; however, the ex-federal agent said nothing "– and you all should know that standing around and arguing is going to get nothing done! We need to start communicating. Tony, you need to tell us why the Company wants you out of here."

"I'm not saying anything until I see Jack," said Tony, nodding at Kellerman at the same time, "and he goes."

"Oh, I'm sure you'd like them to make it that much easier …"

"His grave," Mahone broke in.

Michael looked at his cellmate – Mahone was peering at Tony with a rapidly fermenting understanding of something he had no clue to. Tony seemed to pick up on the train of thought, however, despite his response.

"What?"

"He died in 1995, on December 4. At least, I thought he did, for so long. They even had a grave made for him – you were there. I knew I'd seen you before."

"No, you haven't."

"You took something that day," Mahone insisted, not taking his eyes off Tony as the latter lowered his to the ground. "Whatever Ryan hid there … all of this … has been for that. What was it? Why is it so important to them?"

"Stay away from him, Alex," warned Michael, as his cellmate moved closer to Tony's increasingly discomforted figure.

"People died because of what he did. Cameron and Sara are one mistake away from joining them. If you don't care about my life, at least care about theirs!"

Out of nowhere, Kellerman said, "You really have the final prototype."

Michael and Mahone redirected their shared glare to the other two men. Tony had guilt written over every inch of his body; Kellerman, for the first time in Michael's eyes, looked taken aback.

"What are you talking about?" Mahone blasted.

"Trust me, these are answers you don't want."

"But need," Michael said as Kellerman turned his head to share a look with Tony. "How do you expect us to help you if we don't know what's going on? How do you expect any of us to get out of here alive if –"

At first, Michael thought he had been shot in the back. The force of the hit was so strong it propelled him off his feet, landing him a good distance in front of where he had been standing. It was only when he felt a rush of heat, and turned over on his back to see that the church door had been blown off its hinges, that he realised Sona was under attack.

"Get down!" yelled Kellerman.

The low thrumming noise which had been building up like the roar of a wildebeest suddenly exploded to life, blasting apart the far outer wall of the church room. Michael covered his face as the others ducked, rubble and dust and too many sharp pieces of debris for any of them to avoid being cut flying out at them.

The next few minutes happened too quickly for Michael to process through his injuries. He caught sight of Mahone running out of the room through the ruined doorway, and heard Tony shout something. He tried to stand up, but his clouding vision beckoned him to sleep.

Before he could pass out, he was roughly wrenched to his feet. He became aware of sirens and gunfire, before he picked out his own alarm at the sight of the person who had picked him up – balaclava-clad with an assault rifle in hand.

"No!" he grimaced, thrashing away from the Company agent.

The agent wouldn't let go, however, and pulling off the balaclava, he yelled loud enough for Michael to finally hear him over the destruction going on all around them.

"Where the hell is Tony!"

Michael very nearly screamed back. Fury replacing anger, he cried, "What are you doing, Jack?"

Another explosion interrupted their exchange. Jack pulled him to cover as the other masked agents in the room opened fire on two Sona prisoners who had entered. Michael watched uncomprehendingly as they dropped.

"I didn't have a choice," Jack said, refitting his balaclava. "The Company found out that Tony was exposed. They couldn't ignore that chance."

Michael's vision swam. "Kellerman must have gotten the message to them."

Jack shook his head, raising his head over the upturned bench they were hiding behind and searching the room. "It's important that you pretend we never collaborated once we get out of here, Michael."

"You knew Kellerman was here and you didn't think it was important?"

"_What?"_

Jack's incredulity was quickly overshadowed by three loud bangs directly above them. Jack responded to the gunshots by unsheathing a long hunting knife and leaping around the table. There was a brief shout, before Jack spoke Mahone's name.

Getting up as well, Michael saw his cellmate standing adjacent to Jack. A pistol with a thin smoke tail wisping out of it was in his right hand. A third prisoner, in addition to the two dead ones already in the vicinity, lay sprawled before him.

He lowered the gun slightly as he caught sight of Michael, but still kept it on Jack. He shrugged off the cold-blooded murder using no more words than he needed to.

"Company spy."

"Put the gun down, Alex," said Jack evenly, dropping his own weapons.

Michael's eyes darted between the pair.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"He's betraying us," Mahone spat. "He's already betrayed us. We need to go … one move," he added to the Company agents gathering to his left, "and at least one of you gets a bullet to the head."

Jack's face darkened as his fellow agents halted. "Cameron and Sara are fine. We moved in because Tony's put the Company off meeting a deadline that's arriving sooner than they thought. That doesn't mean the Company doesn't need you anymore."

"I don't think so," Mahone laughed. "There's only so many times you can string up a puppet."

"Where's Almeida?" the closest masked agent to Mahone asked.

Mahone faced him. "Are you seriou-"

A soft whipping noise and flash of movement drew Michael's gaze. He had barely reacted to the pistol Jack had drawn from his jacket before Mahone's chest was pierced by two bullets, the first inches above his heart, and the next below his collarbone.

Jack was already on top of Mahone by the time he stopped moving on the ground. In his shock, Michael didn't fight as another Company agent restrained his hands behind his back. His temporary paralysis vanished, however, when Jack rolled Mahone onto his front and used the back of his head as a new target for his gun.

"No!" Michael shouted before he could stop himself, his eyes whipping from his cellmate's prone figure to Jack's deadened face. "Jack. How will this help? Think about what you're doing!"

"Take Scofield to the chopper," Jack ordered, ignoring the man in question as he pulled the slide back on his gun. "The rest of you – search the area for Almeida, and set up a perimeter."

An inexplicable horror permeated Michael's consciousness as he was spun around and pushed towards Sona's outer courtyard through the wrecked section of the church room. Waiting behind Sona's security fence, of which a large part had been torn down, was an enormous, steel-green helicopter, blades spinning at length.

The sounds more fitting to a war zone had long ago ceased. Now, regarding the carnage of Sona's outskirts consisting mainly of motionless guards and upturned patrol cars, it was clear the victory that had been earned there had not been a hard-earned one.

Michael, his mind still back in the church room, saw none of it.

He had always been so sure that the two men left behind there would end up killing each other. And yet, it couldn't be. Jack couldn't. There had to be a point.

There had to be a plan.

Two gunshots silenced Michael's panicked thoughts. He managed to turn his head for a split second and snatch a glance of the church room. Jack, getting up from where he had pressed the pistol against Mahone's skull, and fired, met his petrified eyes with zero emotion from his own.

Arriving at the helicopter, Michael was shoved inside. Jack was with them in the space of a minute, tucking his gun back into his jacket and climbing in next to Michael. He signalled to the pilot to lift off.

Michael stared emptily at his hands as the Company agent who had forced him into the helicopter protested Jack's command.

"Pull out? Are you crazy? No-one's been able to even get a confirmed sighting of Almeida. They sure as hell won't have a faster way to get him out once they do get him!"

"He's already out of Sona – we have to track him down by satellite!" Jack yelled in reply. "Let's go!"

"You killed Alex," Michael said, voice wavering but still loud enough to be heard as the helicopter began its ascent into the air. "For nothing."

Jack studied Michael's pallid face as he finished strapping himself into his seat.

"Bad things happen to good people. This isn't one of those times."

Face falling into a tight well of revulsion, Michael looked away. He trained his eyes on Sona's church room far below, searching for any signs of life.

None came – and it almost seemed to himself that he cared.


	8. An Endgame And An Enigma

_Chapter 8: An Endgame And An Enigma_

* * *

"I have a list. It has three names on it. Three people I'd do anything to see again. I just want to let you know, as of now, I haven't woken up to a single one of their faces for an entire year."

Despite the darkness, the smirk etched onto the face hovering over Mahone was unmistakeable.

"Nice to have you back on this mortal coil, too, Alex. I'll take a stab at it and guess you weren't nearly as struck with feelings of overwhelming relief at seeing me because you weren't aware I was ever dead."

"The last time I saw you …"

Mahone groaned and stopped mid-rise, falling back on his bed as anger gave way to a throbbing ache in his head only made worse by a ringing in his ears.

After a moment, he managed, "You tried to kill me?"

"There we go! That's the stellar cognitive reasoning machine we've all come to love." Kellerman's voice grew indistinguishable with the roaring in Mahone's head as he moved away from the bed for a moment, before returning with a glass of water. "Though don't forget that Jack was the one who actually shot you. Twice," he added, as though Mahone couldn't feel the golf ball-sized bruises on his chest.

Regarding the glass with as much willingness to drink it as he would be if he had poisoned it himself, Mahone tightened his grip of the sheets at his sides and pushed himself into a sitting position. His face twitched as he met Kellerman's gaze again. There wasn't a person alive he was less endeared to continuing a conversation with after having lain bare to him how weak he was feeling.

"I know what you're thinking," said Kellerman, setting the glass down, "but even if your usefulness ran out on me one day, I wouldn't be cheap enough to suffocate you in your sleep. Too petty for my tastes."

"You're insane."

"Aren't you curious to know what's going on?"

"My son," Mahone replied, menace gaining a stronghold of his voice again. "Where is he, Paul?"

Kellerman smiled. "You know, there's a whole other living, walking and breathing human being in peril right along with Cameron as we speak."

Mahone made a sudden movement for the lapels of Kellerman's coat. However, instead of getting his point across by throttling the ex-Company agent to within an inch of his life, he felt pain swipe through the area just below his collarbone and he gave a sharp yell, falling back. Kellerman's expression remained infuriatingly glib as Mahone felt the bandage jutting out from beneath his shirt.

"I really have to know, Alex. Is it possible to grow tired of surviving gunshot wounds eked out of people's god-awful aims?"

Regaining control of his breathing rate, Mahone spat, "Just tell me what the hell's going on."

Unexpectedly, Kellerman switched on a light overhanging Mahone's bed. As Mahone added the light's glare to the tumult of things hurting his body to the point where unconsciousness was preferable, the other man in the room pulled up a chair.

"You know I like to keep things simple, so here's all you need to know," Kellerman said, sitting. "I testified against the Company. They got to me before I could do any real damage, but instead of permanently silencing me, they threw me in Sona with the order to find and extract Tony Almeida in exchange for my life."

"You were one of the guys they used before me and Michael. One of the two guys who negotiated with Almeida to the point that, if I'm not mistaken, they died," Mahone said, stressing the last word.

"Not that I can't handle myself, but if it weren't for Jane, it might've ended up that way."

"Jane," Mahone repeated. "Jack's source."

"And head of the anti-Company movement, as of your cold-blooded gunning down of Aldo Burrows. Amazing woman. You'll like her when you meet her."

"What are you saying?" asked Mahone, pulling off a significant feat of willpower and ignoring Kellerman's remark about his role in the death of Michael's father. "The same person who told Jack that his best friend was pin-in-a-haystack-ed in a Panamanian prison rescued you from the conspiracy trash heap as well?"

"Well, when you put it that way, I'm so glad I had the undying proportions of your eternal gratitude to look forward to when I risked my life to bring you back to the States."

"It's a simple question, Paul."

"Yeah. She got the message to me that she had enlisted Jack's help in getting to Tony before the Company did. She knew to the exact degree how much the Company had screwed me, and she asked if I'd be willing to join the 'rase those bastards to the ground' campaign. I agreed. She made sure that the next body that came out of Sona had my DNA in it. Now the Company thinks I'm dead. That's becoming my speciality, come to think of it."

"So why did Jack –" the anger level in Mahone's voice spiked despite his attempt at control "– why did he help Ryan machinate my and Michael's incarceration in Sona when he already had you to do the heavy lifting?"

Leaning back in his chair, Kellerman didn't reply for a long moment. At last, he sighed and said, "When I found Tony, he refused to co-operate with me because I did to his wife what Ryan did to yours."

"Excuse me?"

"God gave you that brain for a reason, Alex. Figure it out. Two years ago I planted a car bomb that killed Michelle Dessler, who not only happened to be Almeida's wife, but an actual friend of Jack's. Which didn't exactly keep me in his good graces or the Sona breakout club when he found out."

"I got the part where you were just doing your job," Mahone replied, too tired to put a cap on his sarcasm. "What I don't understand is how you thought telling Almeida that you murdered his wife would earn his trust."

"Now you're not even trying to hide the fact you're mocking my intelligence."

"So he found out on his own."

"As soon as I found him and as soon as he laid eyes on me, the man went out of his mind. I nearly killed him that day out of self-defence. But I knew that wouldn't sit well with either Company or Not Company, so I left him alone. And, from what I've figured, Jack put a plan into motion that would bring the only two people he could trust with Tony to Sona."

At Mahone's expression, Kellerman continued with a smirk, "You don't think I'd mutually acquaint my hands with your windpipe if I'd known you were under Jack's thumb instead of the Company's, do you?"

"Well, when you put it that way, I'm so glad I have the undying proportions of your eternal loyalty to yourself to stake my life on in the future."

A laugh escaped Kellerman's lips, and he stood. "Why don't you sleep on that."

"Wait a second," said Mahone as Kellerman made toward the room's exit. "I still have questions. I have questions, Paul, so stop! Where's my son? Where are we? What happened to everyone else? Why did the Company …"

"We're in a safehouse in Ohio. In two hours, Jane and I will be boarding a plane to Detroit to get Sara and Cameron out of the Company firing line. Michael's probably dead … Jane hasn't really gone out of her way to explain to me what Jack was planning to do with him …"

"I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not. Jack shot you once in your vest and once … happily, not in your vest, and twice right next to your head, so he could make sure you were just as dead to the Company as I am. And in case I haven't pointed out the gaping wound in your chest enough, I'm betting you're going to have difficulty not keeling over at a slight wind, let alone a firefight."

"You can't extract Cameron or Sara without getting them killed."

"Those trust issues are going to bury you one day," Kellerman replied. "We've got it covered. All you need to do is get some rest so your boy has a father to come back to."

Going mute with frustration, Mahone took a sip of water from the glass next to his bed, nearly coughing it back up as the cool liquid met the back of his parched throat.

Finally, he said, "Back in Sona. How do I know you didn't try to kill me on Company orders? That you're not still on their side in this?"

"You know just as well as I do that there are no sides for men like us. There's only our own backs."

"So is Almeida out there right now looking out for number one, or has he picked a side yet?"

Kellerman rubbed his eyes, and for the first time, Mahone could see a glimpse of humanity in the tiredness of the man's face.

"Have you heard of the Arkhangelsk Initiative, Alex?" When Mahone shook his head, Kellerman continued, "If we don't find Almeida soon, he's going to get all of us killed. Now get some rest."

Mahone didn't.


End file.
